Best Open-World Games Where You Start with Nothing
Open-world games provide all sorts of journeys, but the vast majority follow the typical “weak to strong” or “rags to riches” format. This just makes the most sense as it complements the natural gameplay progression employed by most titles, at least ones that are not sequels featuring established protagonists. However, very few open-world games start you with truly nothing, to the point that you only have extremely basic supplies and your wits to rely on.
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These fantastic survival games are not only great solo but can be enjoyed with friends, too. Here are the very best of co-op survival games.
As long as you are not specifically craving a power fantasy that quickly gets to the “power” part, these types of adventures can be incredibly satisfying and gratifying. They allow you to steadily grow more familiar with the world’s challenges as you pick up new skills, more powerful weapons, and experience, rather than just handing them out from the start.
9
Valheim
Norse Rules
Releasing in 2021 at the very peak of the survival genre boom, Valheim was an underdog story in every way. An obscure indie company published it, had a strange art style, and came out absolutely swinging for the mechanical fences. Yet, Valheim built upon the foundations of a well-trodden genre and charmed its players with a vision of Norse mythology, a roster of brilliant bosses, and immensely satisfying survival gameplay.
It also offered the pure experience of starting with absolutely nothing and being forced to make do with whatever the player could get their hands on. By the time the game finished and players had built entire towns, it’s hard to think of many games that match that sense of satisfaction.
8
Sons Of The Forest
Cannibals and Mutants? Oh My!
When the original The Forest game was released on PC back in 2014, it took on a bit of a reputation for being a uniquely horrifying game due to its atmospheric titular woods, dynamic monsters that lurk in the dark, and a truly pitch-black nighttime. Sons of the Forest, released almost ten years later, doesn’t do much to evolve the franchise. Instead, it perfected the formula.
The player starts as a victim of a crash landing on a beautiful but hostile forest island with little else but the clothes on their back and horrific monsters roaming the woods just waiting to grab them. Not only is it satisfying to build a base worth defending and building up a treasure chest of powerful items, but actually fending off the threats successfully provides a sense of genuine and unique pride that few other games offer.
7
DayZ
The OG And Still On Top
DayZ
- Released
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December 13, 2018
Throughout the 2010s, the open-world survival game had a massive boom in popularity, perhaps spearheaded by DayZ, originally an ARMA 2 mod, but now a standalone game that takes all the brutal difficulty of the original mod and transposes it directly into a singularly grueling world of its own. Players are dropped into the Russian wilderness on their own, and it’s up to them to gear up with good enough weapons and survive.
8 Best Survival Games That Let You Play Your Own Way
Survival games come in all shapes and sizes, but the best examples of the genre are often the ones that offer players the most freedom of choice.
While DayZ offers the usual trappings of building up gear and becoming a fearsome threat, the player also gets a lot of satisfaction out of learning the geography of the map itself. There’s no minimap, no quest markers, only the environment, which means when the player finally masters the world, they’ve truly ascended from having nothing and becoming the threat.
6
Conan Exiles
You Literally Start With Nothing
Despite being an acquired taste, Conan Exiles has something for nearly everyone. If you want a hardcore single-player survival game, Funcom’s title is absolutely perfect. The campaign starts with you being naked and weaponless in a hostile environment, and the first few hours are spent collecting resources to make basic items and shelter so you can hopefully see the next day. You cannot start with less than that, and the game makes you earn your progress and does not hand it out readily.
While the start is labored and slow, Conan Exiles does a pretty great job of instilling a growing sense of empowerment, as your barbarian goes from a weakling who can barely survive against wildlife to a power fantasy hero who can take down impressive creatures. Although it contains a story, Conan Exiles is primarily played as an endless sandbox that encourages players to work together (or fight each other).
5
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
A Peasant’s Lot
Most open-world games that have the player begin with nothing are usually survival games, but that’s not always the case. In the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance, players begin as Henry of Skalitz, the son of a blacksmith with no money and few skills, which proves a major problem when the Cumans burn Skaltiz to the ground and leave Henry with no family and nothing to his name.
So begins the long quest of Henry becoming a knight and soldier fearsome enough to seek vengeance in an unfair world where peasants are looked down upon at every turn. By the time the game finishes, players have become the fearsome threat they were victims of in the beginning, leading to one of the most satisfying finales in open-world gaming.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 also starts you with effectively nothing, even though it continues Henry’s story. However, we picked the first game since it is a bit more fitting for this topic.
4
The Long Dark
Out In The Cold
When it comes to the actual work of surviving in a hostile environment, most open-world survival games are pretty loose with the details and don’t mind too much giving away a little realism. Not so with The Long Dark, which places players in one of many dangerous locations with absolutely nothing and forces them to survive.
8 Best Survival Games For Challenging Exploration, Ranked
Players who love a good challenge to go along with their exploration will enjoy what the following survival games have to offer.
Not only do players need to worry about water, food, heat, and shelter, but also local wildlife, light, how food is cooked, and countless other considerations. While it can be stressful to begin with, by the end of the experience, if the player pays attention and works hard, they can become the master of one of the cruelest settings in all survival games.
3
Subnautica
Under The Sea
Thalassaphobes beware: the premise of Subnautica is, simply put, horrifying. At the beginning of the game, the player crash lands upon a planet entirely covered by the ocean with absolutely nothing save their life raft, and they’re faced with the daunting challenge of how to return home somehow.
This means going where humans don’t belong: the deep sea. There are all sorts of horrifying creatures in the dark, and players need to use all their survival skills to create vehicles, structures, and maps to survive. Just remember, if a Reaper roars, it’s too late to run.
2
Fallout: New Vegas
Without A Big Iron On Your Hip
In some open-world games, it’s bad enough that the player begins with no resources and has to fend for themselves. Fallout: New Vegas takes that premise one step further and asks: “What if the player character had no memories either?”. What results is one of the greatest RPGs ever made that gives the player total carte blanche over what kind of courier they want to be.
By the end of the game, the humble courier becomes one of the most prominent power players in the entire Mojave Wasteland, deciding the fates of thousands of people and the game’s powerful factions. That’s a big step up from starting with nothing, not even any memories, and it makes for one of the most satisfying stories in modern RPGs.
1
Minecraft
One Block At A Time
As if it could be anything else. It’s hard to overstate the immense impact Minecraft has had since its launch, revolutionizing indie gaming, survival gaming, and the kinds of games studios would make for over a decade. Due to its procedural generation, the player is always placed in an unknown world, and starting with nothing but simple hands willing to beat wooden blocks out of trees, they need to figure out how to survive.
While the game’s survival mechanics may not be the most complex, it is single-handedly the purest evocation of the satisfaction felt when starting from nothing and becoming the master of the world. By the time the player calls it quits, they will have explored and mastered a world entirely made just for them. It’s a feeling still unrivaled, making Minecraft undoubtedly one of the greatest games of all time.
Free Open-World Games With The Best Exploration
These free open-world games offer vast and beautiful open worlds, great exploration, loads of content; there’s almost no catch.