Survival games are among the most cruel gaming genres available. This is due to the fact that most experiences under this umbrella plunge players into a world with absolutely nothing and challenges them to acquire materials and maintain their health in order to stay alive for as long as possible.

While the concept may appear overwhelming at first, it can be amplified when these games are brutal in their presentations. Those classified M for Mature by the ESRB are the most harsh, as they often feature violence and other severe themes that would not be acceptable for a younger audience.

Days To Die

Survival games are known for having a ton of systems that players can tinker around with. 7 Days to Die is one of the deeper survival experiences out there as they have a ton of systems that are spread out among many different gameplay elements, pulling from other genres like first-person shooters and tower defense games.

The open world of 7 Days to Die is split between five different biomes that the player can explore and take on hordes of zombies. It has a deep crafting system that allows players to make tools ranging from weapons to vehicles. It can be played with friends and against other players, plus it has a huge modding community.

Conan Exiles

Settings matter when it comes to an open world that players will spend a lot of time with. Conan Exiles is an open-world survival multiplayer game set in the Conan the Barbarian universe, where the game starts with Conan rescuing the player and then setting them off to survive on their own.

Along with wandering an intense world to gather materials, Conan Exiles players can gear up their character in a specific way that will get them ready to create or join a clan in war. Along with building civilizations, an arsenal of tools can be used to take on players, from swords and bows to endless amounts of magic.

This War Of Mine

As mentioned earlier, mature-rated survival games are among the most brutal in the genre. This War of Mine is a look at what it is like being a civilian trying to survive in the middle of a war, where enemy soldiers have no problem taking down innocent people that aren’t trying to fight back.

From this angle, This War of Mine tells the story of many of the people who have to live in this dangerous world trying to provide for each other while their world falls apart. Decisions made throughout the game will determine how long a person survives in this bleak environment.

The Forest

A lot of survival games typically start the player off in the middle of nowhere with no backstory to know how they ended up in the situation they are currently in. The Forest starts with the player on a plane that later crashes into the woods, where horrific mutants are ready to make their attack.

As with many survival games, The Forest tasks the player to attempt to live in the woods after the crash. This includes building a camp and gathering resources, plus dealing with any enemies that may try to kill the player at night. The depth of the game actually comes from the mutants themselves, as they are more than just monsters, as well as a dynamic combat system.

Rust

Most of the time, games rated mature in the survival genre are given that rating because of the violence and gore. While that is also the case with Rust, the survival multiplayer game dinosaur game is also known for having players start out with nothing at all. Not even clothes.

While this is a comedic element of Rust, there’s much more to the game than its unique starting point. Unlike many other games on this list, the game is very focused on surviving the wilderness, which includes animals and other players who are living around the world. If players don’t want to interact with random people, there are private servers available.