Written by Shawn 2022 Cohort
After several years of immersing myself in video games, I haven’t really think about which specific genre I’m most fond of. I try to remember and clasify all of the games that I played before, and come to realize that survival games are the one to provides me with the most enjoyable experience.
Scarcity of food
For most survival games, hunger value is one of the most important systems. As a player, you need to find an adequate and steady source of food to ensure you don’t starve to death.”Don’t starve”, one of the most famous survival games digged deep into the food system. Just like its name, the hardest thing you’ll meet is the starving. As people who live in modern society may have never experienced the difficulty of obtaining food in real life. Survival games hit the spot, making us feel as if we have returned to the primitive society tens of thousands of years ago, awakening the memory of certain ancient biological instincts.
Planting and Cooking
The design for cooking system in most games are only as a special case of “crafting”. But in some of the survival games, the feature was designed in a very brilliant way, which provided multiple different ingredient to make a variety of recipe. In addition, the implant system is complementary to it, which allows to cultivate ingredients needed for cooking. For some players who are not particularly keen on combat. These systems can also provide enough fun in the multiplayer mode.
Adventure elements
In addition to the core gameplay of survival, adventure elements are often the main gameplay of such games, and high freedom sandbox exploration can make the game much more fun. A large number of props, maps and creatures scattered throughout the map for players to collect will continue to bring a sense of novelty to players.
The addictive thrill of being on the brink of death in survival games taps into humanity’s innate survival instincts and curiosity. The reason why it attracts me so much might be because it fulfills our natural desires to stay alive and explore.