Design a survival game and complete a survival game design document by understanding its key principles, such as harvesting, crafting, and combat. The key principles influence level design and determine what types of enemies and resources spawn in each level. They determine the challenges that players face and how those challenges scale as players progress through the game.
Consider the theme of the survival game before designing anything else. Survival games live or die based on the success of their themes. The theme dictates other key elements of the game, like the type of environments, hazards, and resources available to the player. Brainstorm ways to implement narrative beats through environmental storytelling.
Start by researching other survival games to identify the mechanics they employ. Consider innovating these mechanics if the theme of the survival game allows an opportunity for innovation. Survival players accept more novel, innovative mechanics if the theme matches.
Record your design choices with a survival game design document. A survival game design document ensures everyone on the team understands the type of game being made, the mechanics used, and the theme and narrative. It tracks the game’s development over time, changing as needed based on testing and player feedback. Keep detailed notes in the game design document for easy reference down the line. Read on to discover how each principle influences key design choices, including level design, challenges, mechanics, game theme, and UI.
What are the principles of survival game design?
The principles of survival game design must include harvesting, crafting, and combat systems. Players expect certain gameloops from survival games. These three principles–harvesting, crafting, and combat–define the survival game experience. Determine how each of the principles impact design choices in gameplay systems, UI, core mechanics, and level design, then record them in the survival game design document.
Start designing a survival game by defining the core gameplay loops first. A gameplay loop is a sequence of actions that the player takes to progress through the game. Another way to think of a gameplay loop is to consider them as goals. A player searches for a crafting resource, harvests it, and then uses it to make a healing substance, for instance. Determine how the game’s world impacts each aspect of the core gameplay loop, such as harvesting, crafting, and combat.
Focus on designing the harvesting gameplay loop first. Harvesting is the initial stage that players must complete to obtain resources for other gameplay loops. Key aspects to think about when designing the harvesting loop is the type of resources available. They must make sense for the game’s world and setting. A lush island has far more organic resources available than a desolate moon or planet, for instance.
Design the crafting gameplay loop second. Crafting takes the resources that the players have harvested and turns them into items, consumables, or base-building objects. A crafting system must not be overly complex. It must include resources that make sense for the player to be able to collect at the current stage of the game. Write out all the different crafting recipes in the game design document to keep track of what resources make what and where players find those resources in the game.
Consider the combat gameplay loop third. Not every survival game has combat, although that tends to push the game into the “cozy” genre rather than an authentic survival game experience. Determine the type of combat mechanics expected to be in the game. A survival game set on an island has the player making basic weapons such as spears and bows, for instance. Combat mechanics differ based on the type of actions and weapons available.
Determine who the enemy is in the game to create combat situations. A faction of NPCs must have a clear identity and reason for why they’re against the player. In a survival game, everyone is desperate to stay alive. That provides plenty of opportunities for conflict. Human NPCs aren’t the only option. The local wildlife presents opportunities for combat situations. Survival games that feature zombies or supernatural creatures benefit from having creative enemies to force players into combat.
Determine which of these core survival game principles play the most important part in the game. The Long Dark focuses on isolation with the wildlife presenting combat situations early in the game. Its main focus is on harvesting and surviving the harsh, freezing environment, however. Rust, on the other hand, places a greater emphasis on combat by using PVP mechanics. Decide how resource management works in a survival game that prioritizes harvesting and crafting.
Design the resource management system and how it impacts the type of resources available in the game. Scarcity is what drives the action in a survival game. Players must always be looking for the next crafting resource to make better gear, consumables, or to strengthen their bases. Sketch out where each type of resource spawns in the world overview section of the game design document.
Determine the resource spawn locations in the world to further design the resource management system. Organic resources such as wood, water, and plants must make sense for where they spawn. It doesn’t make much sense to have lots of water spawn zones in a desert climate, for instance. 7 Days to Die places its rare loot in challenging locations filled with enemies to push players into taking risks.
Decide which environmental hazards make sense to include to make harvesting, crafting, and combat even more exciting. Some survival games turn nature itself into the main antagonist. Dune Awakening has a devastating sandstorm that sweeps through the map at any moment. It forces players to take cover, abandon their goals for safety, or decide to take the risk and try to weather the storm.
Determine how the UI plays into designing environmental hazards. Players must receive a warning of some sort about an incoming hazard to give them a fair chance of surviving it. Using Dune Awakening’s example, the player receives a warning via a pop up on their screen that they have one minute before a sandstorm hits the area. Add other visual cues to drive the tension and build up to the hazard’s arrival.
Consider difficulty progression when designing the three principles of a survival game. While a player must feel as though they’re growing stronger, the tension must continue to keep driving them to their next goal. Making tougher enemies is one way to scale the difficulty, but a survival game must include challenges such as new obstacles presented by the environment, new hazards, and a lack of resources in new zones.
Focus on using adaptive progression curves to scale the danger to a player’s progress in the game. Early survival game gameplay focuses on teaching the player how to survive. As players progress, however, the challenges scale. Project Zomboid uses adaptive progression curves to ease the player into learning how to play the game, then links time to difficulty. The longer a player survives, the more overwhelming the challenges become.
Design the narrative to go hand-in-hand with environmental storytelling. Not every survival game has an extensive story. Some simply have the world end and have the player thrust into the aftermath. Others provide more context, but since there aren’t many other living people around, they have to rely on environmental storytelling. Integrate environmental storytelling with key narrative moments.
Include the different ways a player learns about the world or the story through environmental storytelling. Found objects, such as lost journal pages or an old video camera, provide fun methods of delivering lore. Make some of these moments rewards for players who go the extra mile when exploring an area.
Focus on making a clear UI to cleanly support harvesting, crafting, and combat in the survival game. Unlike other game types, such as RPGs, survival games benefit from having minimal user interfaces. Critical information must be clearly displayed, allowing players to quickly glance at their health or hunger to make fast decisions about how to handle a situation.
Design the UI as an interactive part of the game experience. The Forest provides an effective example in this case. To access the crafting menu, players pull up a crafting book. The game doesn’t pause while the player is in the menu. It’s possible for an enemy to sneak up and attack the player at any moment. This type of UI enhances the tension rather than giving the player a moment to breathe and break immersion.
How to design levels for a survival game?
Design levels for a survival game by focusing on elements such as the level layout, level objectives, level challenges, resource distribution, environmental hazards, level or world events, safe zones, enemy placement, and balancing difficulty. All these elements together create unique and satisfying levels that focus on the three principles of every survival game–harvesting, crafting, and combat.
Begin designing levels by first brainstorming different survival game ideas. The levels must make sense for the survival game idea. Choosing to make a survival game set in medieval times mustn’t have levels that take place on a space station, for example. Once the survival game idea is set, creating levels is a lot easier since it’s grounded in the idea’s theme and setting.
Design the level layout flow to guide players from the level’s starting point to its exit. Level flow mustn’t be so obvious or linear that players don’t feel challenged. Using elevation changes offers opportunities to place enemies or vantage points that bring challenge or interest to the level, for instance. Players learn that they need to keep an eye on the sky to avoid an enemy ambush. Using the terrain to sculpt the flow of the level is a natural way of designing level flow. Riverbeds, fallen trees, and even mountains to organically guide players to certain zones. Determine how spatial complexity impacts the level layout.
Spatial complexity refers to the groupings of resources or certain places of interest in a level. The more diverse the spread of resources or the aspects of a level to explore and interact with, the higher the spatial complexity of the level is. Including shortcuts or new routes that are unlocked by advancing the player’s gear is another way to improve the complexity of the level. It drives the player to engage with the other gameplay loops. To climb a shortcut up a cliff, the player has to first mine iron ore and smelt it into a climbing pick, for example. Not every level needs clear objectives, but specific gameplay loops require them.
Create clear level objectives when the game requires it. Survival games aren’t the same as RPGs. Players don’t always receive quests from the local NPC to take out a dragon. In most cases, the world of a survival game is desolate. When a player interacts with a friendly NPC, any quest they have must have clear objectives. The level must make those objectives clear, by using UI or through designing the level to naturally guide the player to their objectives. “Show, don’t tell” is the leading design philosophy for survival game quests and level design.
Use the “Show, don’t tell” design philosophy to add character and uniqueness to each level. Think of each level as an opportunity to tell a story. Players see an abandoned grocery store on the road. Instead of making it a standard grocery store where the player loots food, determine how the grocery store tells a story. Perhaps the player finds a journal stashed away from the former owner. Even something as simple as a teddy bear that’s been left behind adds intrigue to the level. Environmental storytelling makes a level interesting, and it pushes conflict, too. Ensure that each conflict is balanced.
Keep a level’s difficulty in mind when designing them. Challenges come in many forms, and players mustn’t feel overwhelmed by several of them triggering at once. Prioritize early levels with challenges that help the player learn how to play the game and cover the basics. As the player progresses and gets better gear, the difficulty of the levels must increase, too. Levels in a survival game must present new challenges to the player but only fairly. Determine how the game guides players when they’re stuck.
Don’t use guides that are overused or obvious, such as yellow or white paint. They’re useful in certain aspects, but they don’t always make sense in a survival game. It’s unlikely that there’s someone with a can of paint going around and marking the best places to stash loot. Unless the survival game leans toward hardcore realism, designers still have the opportunity to use natural guides to help navigate players through a level. Tie helpful guides to resource allocation in a level next.
Determining resource allocation is a vital part of level design in a survival game. Resource scarcity is a major factor that drives players from their safe bases and into the dangerous world. Decide which levels have certain resources, and then where those resources naturally spawn. The “why” of the matter is essential here because having resources spawn in a place that doesn’t make sense breaks immersion. High-quality resources must spawn more rarely than common resources.
Choosing where to place resources is only half the battle. The frequency of those spawns is important. High-quality medical supplies must spawn less frequently than trees for wood, for instance. They’re rare, so they must be rare to find. As levels become more challenging, the difficulty of finding high-quality items must change. They must increase or at least become proportional to the intensity of the challenge that the player endures. Hazards are an effective way to increase the challenge of a level and provide an opportunity to spawn rare resources.
Design hazards as a way to spice up a level. Hazards mustn’t be so frequent that they become a chore or predictable. They must only appear when the player least expects it or when the player is starting to feel safe and in control. Hazards present a creative challenge for designers. Blizzards, sandstorms, and heat waves are typical hazards, but there are plenty of opportunities to create hazards relative to the game’s theme and setting. A passing plague in a medieval survival game is an example.
Ensure that the hazards aren’t so dangerous that they provide an unfair gameplay experience. There must be some signs that a hazard is approaching to give players a chance to prepare. Tornadoes don’t just show up, for instance. There must be signs such as strong winds, dark clouds, and appropriate sound design to indicate one is coming. As players obtain gear that makes surviving hazards easier, design them to be more challenging. A successful survival game continues to present fresh, randomized challenges to its players.
Use randomized environmental events to continue to challenge players throughout the game. Randomizing hazards is an example of this strategy. They keep the world from feeling static or reactionary. While feeling the world react to the player is satisfying, a survival game requires its world to be an active participant. Players must feel as though they’re surviving against the world’s wishes. A way to provide this feeling is by designing timed or triggered events such as a flash flood. Scale the events based on the player’s progression to keep them challenging.
Players won’t have a hard time overcoming hazards in a level when their gear or skills surpass their danger level. Avoid this problem by scaling the environmental event’s intensity to match the player’s progression. A player just learned how to make metal armor, but when a random heatwave event occurs, the metal armor starts to cook them alive, for instance. Randomized events make a player feel unsafe, but each level must have a zone or two of safety.
Determine which parts of a level are a player’s safe zone or checkpoint area. Safe zones must feel as though they’re safe and not just a place without nearby enemy spawns. The surrounding area of the level must present enough danger and challenge that the player genuinely feels secure when returning to a safe zone. Choose the number of safe zones in a level by understanding the level’s difficulty. A challenging level only has one safe area while an easy level has several–and they’re situated close to resource spawns. Consider how level layout flow leads to the safe zone.
Players don’t mind having to struggle through a challenging level if a safe zone is at its end. They don’t want to go through that process over and over again to reach the safe zone every time, however. Design the safe zone of a level with the layout flow in mind. Use shortcuts that players open up after reaching the safe zone for the first. These shortcuts allow them to bypass the most challenging aspects of reaching the safe zone for future treks. Focus on making these zones accessible based on the game’s difficulty.
Match the survival game’s level design with the game’s difficulty mode. Easier modes offer up more safe zones for players to use. They include safe areas that are closer to resource spawns or allow players to fast travel directly back to a safe zone. Challenging game difficulty modes are situated further away from resource spawns and don’t allow players to fast travel directly to them. Make the safety zone feel safe or unsafe based on the game’s difficulty. A warm bed in a cozy cabin makes players feel safe in easy mode, for instance. Break that sense of comfort by designing enemy placement in a level next.
Determine enemy spawns in a level to provide the player with satisfying challenges. Keep in mind why the enemy is there when designing enemy placement. A pack of wolves spawns near a deer hunting area because they’re competing with the player for food resources. Intelligent enemies, such as people, require even more thought. Enemies aren’t going to realistically stand around in the snow all day just waiting for someone to arrive, for example. Give enemies a reason for why they’re in the level and why they’re opposed to the player. Ensure the difficulty of the enemies scale alongside player progression.
Place only a few enemies in a level during the start of the game. The challenges must be easy enough to allow players to learn how to play. A lone wolf instead of a pack of wolves introduces the player to how wolves behave and attack in the game. It allows the player to learn a strategy on how to defeat them in the process. As players become more powerful, scale the enemy challenge with them. A pack of wolves replaces the lone wolf, requiring the player to adapt their strategy. Design the level to give the player advantages or disadvantages to add even further complexity to the level’s challenge.
Design levels with the player progression cycle in mind. Early in the game, players must have access to common resources that allow them to craft and build common items. As the game progresses, levels must have advanced and then rare resources. Players are able to get their hands on those new resources and craft even more powerful gear. Develop a progression curve and match each major milestone to a level that presents new resources for players to use. Consider how new gear affects player traversal.
Allow players the creativity and agency to explore on their own terms. One method to do that is to have certain pathways that are unlocked to players at first. As they progress through the game, they have new tools that allow them to blast away cave entrances, unlocking a shortcut to an older area, for example. Determine when players get access to these types of tools and when they are the most impactful in regard to level design.
How to design a UI for a survival game?
Design a UI for a survival game that focuses on providing critical information at a glance. Survival games are different from RPGs in the sense that the players are constantly under threat. They need to know the status of their health, temperature, hunger, stamina, and other vital health indicators at any given moment. A minimalistic approach is standard for survival game UIs because it presents vital information cleanly and quickly.
Design an effective survival game UI by keeping a balance between readability and immersion, researching other UI styles in survival games, creating clean UI for core gameplay systems, including clear iconography, making the UI accessible to players with visual challenges, include quality of life UI such as tooltips, and integrating all UI with VFX and SFX. Determine the types of UI needed for the survival game first. Common survival game UIs include the following information.
- Player Inventory
- Crafting Menus
- Health or Status Indicators
- HUD
- Base Building
Choose how to balance UI between readability and immersion in a way that doesn’t break the tension in the game. Survival games rely on tension to make players feel pressured. Pausing the game to access a menu breaks that immersion and pressure. A better balance is to keep the game running in the background even while the player is accessing a UI. One method is to blur the background behind the UI to keep players on edge about what’s happening around them.
Research other survival games to find UI reference examples. Enshrouded has a simplistic UI with transparency and a blurred background to keep the player aware of what’s going on around them, for example. All the information in the UI is clearly laid out, allowing players to quickly navigate to the parts they need. Keep in mind the color choices, text fonts, general layout, and information hierarchy to understand how survival game UIs typically appear. Sons of the Forest provides another effective example of UI design.
While Enshrouded blurs its background, Sons of the Forest keeps its background clear. It allows players to see any approaching enemies in front of them, but their back is still exposed. Sons of the Forest chose to let their players see everything, which is an effective choice for a game that leans toward horror. Sometimes the scariest things happen in broad daylight. It doesn’t pause the game, which means the player remains vulnerable while accessing the crafting and building menus.
Design the inventory system UI after researching how other survival games handle their inventory UI. Choose how the inventory is going to be displayed first. Many survival games use a simplistic grid system with drag-and-drop support. A grid system is a clean way to see and sort through items in the inventory. Drag-and-drop is an immersive method of allowing players to move items around in their inventory. Consider making navigation easier by adding in quality of life features.
Include quality of features to the UI design for the inventory to allow players to quickly find what they need. Adding in categories that allow players to search between things like consumables, armor, and tools provides enough guidance to keep the UI from becoming cumbersome. Remember that the guiding design principle here is efficiency. Players don’t have the time to search through their entire inventory to find what they need. Make interacting with the inventory more satisfying with VFX.
Upgrade the inventory system UI in a survival game by adding visual feedback. Each time a player stacks, equips, or drops something, add in a little visual flair to make it more immersive. When a player clicks on an icon for an item and drags it to a different grid slot, they see the icon being dragged, for example. It’s a more pleasing experience than clicking an icon, seeing nothing, and then suddenly seeing the icon appear where the player “dropped” it in a slot. Include labels and clear icons that explain what each section of the inventory is. A hammer and anvil icon indicates the switch from the inventory UI to the crafting UI, for example.
Focus on designing the crafting UI for a survival game next. Crafting is a complex process, so the UI needs to support it as much as possible to make the process easy to understand. Consider what the crafting UI must entail first. Recipe books, crafting unlockables, the crafting UI, itself, are all important and make up the crafting gameplay. Determine what resources are needed to create an item, then break down the recipe into parts, icons, and the result. Consider how involved the crafting process is to determine the level of complexity with its UI.
A crafting process that is intricate and has several different resource requirements benefits from having a singular UI window. The process is already complex enough without having to add several windows that the player needs to navigate into the mix. A way to break up a complex crafting process is to attach the UI to certain workstations or crafting benches. Determine the appearance of a crafting menu in a blacksmith compared to a kitchen, for example. Tailor each menu to a crafting bench to give it some personalization.
Make crafting processes clear by using clean iconography to depict resources and items. A player mustn’t have to try and guess what the image in the icon represents. That adds a layer of challenge that isn’t fair. Iconography must cover everything from resources to consumables to tools. Items that have different rarities or tiers must have their own, unique iconography. Include designing the interface with modularity in mind. Switching certain icons out for new icons as players progress saves the team time instead of having to make each crafting system by scratch.
Consider accessibility options when designing the UI for a survival game. Whether it’s an inventory or crafting system, players have different needs. Those who struggle to see certain colors must have the option of choosing a different color for the UI, for instance. The ability to change the font size or the UI size as a whole ensures that players are able to easily interact with and read the UI no matter their situation.
Apply inclusive design principles to support players with other needs. The ability to change the controller layout is an effective method of ensuring the UI works for, rather than hinders, a player. Even when the design team has a specific aesthetic in mind for the UI, accessibility matters. Survival games are already challenging enough. Players mustn’t feel as though the game is challenging simply because the UI is hard for them to read or use. Apply these ideas when designing the HUD next.
Determine what elements are part of the HUD UI for the survival game. A standard HUD has lots of information such as player vitals, a minimap, a container for spells or abilities, and a number of other things. The HUD of a survival game must remain minimalistic. They avoid permanent on-screen overlays, such as a minimap. Some survival games don’t even provide a header with a compass. Choose the type of information that is essential for the player to know in the game.
Essential information to include in the HUD of a survival game are health, stamina, hunger, and thirst. Design those essentials first, and then determine what other information is necessary for the player to have. Choose where the information is placed on the screen. Player vitals are most commonly placed at the bottom or top left side of the screen, while others do away with progress bars and instead make the player’s screen turn bloodier as they become more damaged. Consider using common design tropes to make it easier for players to understand the HUD.
A common design trope for HUD design is using certain colors to indicate player vitals. Health is commonly red or green, while a mana bar is commonly blue. Green typically represents stamina. Color psychology is important to consider in a survival game since players need to know fast whether something is safe to eat or not, for example. Green represents positive outcomes while red represents negative outcomes. Get creative with how player vitals are displayed on the screen.
Spice the HUD design up by moving past progress bars to indicate player vitals. A health and stamina bar are effective, but they’re common, too. Consider designing the bar in a way that matches the game’s theme, at least. A stamina bubble that flickers or grows smaller as fatigue sets in is more immersive and interesting than just watching a progress bar go up and down. Keep minimalism in mind when adding the extra visual flair for the HUD as well as the alerts and notifications UI.
Design the alerts and notification system UI for a survival game next. An alert and notification system must strike a balance between providing crucial information to a player without overwhelming them. Alerts related to a player’s status such as low hunger, low thirst, or developing a design must remain on the screen longer than an alert about an upcoming storm, for example. Alerts and notifications are an essential part of a survival game’s UI because they help make players aware of situations around them.
Include sound design with the alerts and notification system to make the UI stand out. An exclusive sound to indicate player vitals versus an approaching storm helps players quickly learn what’s happening. Based on the sound alone, they’ll know whether they need to quickly eat something or start running for shelter. Determine the color choice and style of the alerts. Less intense alerts mustn’t look quite as glaring as extreme alerts. Matching the tone of an alert with the severity of the situation helps build the tension further. Determine how in-depth to make navigational UI, too.
Navigational aids are aspects of the UI that help players orient themselves in the world. They’re the compass at the top of the screen that tells a player when they’re headed north. They’re a minimap or a map, itself. Design navigational aids based on the type of experience that the survival game aims to provide. A realistic survival game where the player starts with nothing must limit the amount of navigation aid that the UI provides. A more forgiving, cozy survival game has navigational UI in the form of a permanent map that allows players to see where everything is. Link navigation UI to player progress.
Design navigation UI to act as a reward. As players progress through the game, they come across pieces of a map. Once all the pieces are collected, the player has a full map of the area, showing them secret locations. Determine the appearance of those pieces, the map’s appearance once it’s assembled, and where those pieces are scattered across the game. A simplistic approach is to give the player a compass as a high-value item during a crucial milestone in the game. Tying these two elements together makes the player more appreciative of having access to the UI.
Design the resource management panel next to give players a clear understanding of their situation. A resource management panel is a UI that shows players the total number of resources they have, what those resources are, and how much they’re using. It allows players to see whether there are any gaps in their production or if they’re running low on something. The panel offers a chance for designers to implement other quality-of-life features such as real-time tracking.
Real-time tracking allows players to track a resource they’ve discovered. It tells them what biome, or level, the resource is harvestable in. Real-time tracking tracks recipes, too. When a player wants to make an axe, they use the resource management panel to track the resources required to make an axe. The panel then indicates where those resources are found. Design the resource management panel with simplicity in mind. Present the information as clearly as possible to avoid confusing the player.
Add a tooltip system as another quality of life feature to the UI design of a survival game. Tooltips provide contextual or other quick tips about a certain item, place, or element. A player typically hovers over an element, such as an axe in their inventory, and a tooltip pops up to give information about the axe. Determine what items benefit from a tooltip and the tooltip’s appearance. Any item that has additional information that its main text box doesn’t cover benefits from a tooltip.
Design the tooltip’s interactivity next. Some survival games have the player hover over an item for it to appear. Others require the player to press a button to access its information. Determine which method fits with the rest of the game’s UI design. Tooltips are an effective resource for providing additional information in a scannable way. They allow players to quickly gain the information they need and then move on. Contextual action buttons are similar to tooltips, but they act as direct interactions.
Determine what button or key represents the contextual action button first. A contextual action button is a pop up on the player’s screen that prompts them to press a certain button to interact with something. A common use case is a button to pick up an item. The player sees the Square button symbol to open a drawer, for instance. Contextual action buttons are a type of UI that needs to be designed for a survival game, too.
Match the style of the contextual action button with the rest of the UI. It must use the same color, size, and text, if applicable. The text is important because it tells the player what’s going to happen when they press the button in the particular context they find themselves in. The text must be clear and actionable or informative. Keep the text legible and use high contrast to ensure players are able to easily read it. Choose the button players must press to interact with the prompt with care. Contorting fingers just to pick up a letter isn’t going to be an enjoyable experience. Focus on designing the pause and settings UI last.
Design the pause and settings UI for a survival game with the same level of care and attention to detail as the rest of the UI. Pause menus don’t always pause in a survival game. Some keep the game running to keep players on the edge of their toes. Determine whether that’s a design choice that makes sense for the survival game. Settings menus must have clear categories where all the appropriate settings are grouped. The audio settings must fall under the audio section, for example. Keep the menus clear and easily navigable so players are able to find the settings they need.
How to design challenges for survival games?
Design challenges for survival games by building on the four main types of challenges commonly used in the genre. Players expect to face certain challenges in a survival game since the goal is ultimately to survive. Determine which type of challenges play a major part in the survival game, then design other elements of a challenge such as risk-reward mechanics, adaptive difficulty systems, hazards, time-based challenges, resource scarcity, and how they all influence each other.
Understand the four types of challenges found in survival games first. Survival game challenges are different from those found in RPGs or first person shooters. Not every challenge has a clear “win” state. Some of the challenges are even ongoing with rising stakes. Challenges are obstacles or systems that push the player into behaving a certain way or reacting. An example of an ongoing challenge is finding clean water in a desolate environment where water is rare. A simplified challenge is taking down an enemy that’s guarding a loot box.
Each main challenge category has its own systems and mechanics. Not every survival game utilizes each challenge. Some focus on self-survival instead of hostile elements, for instance. Determine whether the survival game’s setting and theme matches a certain challenge category better than others, and then design a framework of systems that the challenge requires. Take a look at the four main challenge categories below to see which fits the survival game’s overall idea.
Self-Survival Challenges: Self-survival challenges in survival games focus on resource management. They pit players in wastelands or other hostile environments with scarce resources. Players must focus on satisfying their hunger, thirst, and any other vital needs to overcome the challenge. These challenges are typically ongoing. Ignoring the challenge results in the player dying of hunger or thirst–immediately or down the line.
Environmental Threats: Challenges that deal with the environment around the player fall under this category. They encompass everything from freezing temperatures to a pit of lava. Players must learn what type of gear to craft to survive the environment or what tools to maneuver through a level. Similar to self-survival challenges, environmental threats present an ongoing challenge for players to face. They scale in difficulty and damage over time.
Intentional Hostile Elements: Survival games that feature factions, wildlife, or have multiplayer elements have access to intentional hostile challenges. This category of challenge features combat. The combat takes place between the player and a pack of wolves, the player against a group of bandits, or the player against another player, for example. Other related challenges include things such as finding or making ammo, stealthing around a group of hostiles, or competing over scarce resources.
Structural Threats: Survival games that feature base-building must have structural threat challenges. These types of threats take many forms, such as a sandstorm that passes through the area and damages the building, or a group of hostile NPCs that start beating down a wall. Structural threats are any type of challenge that does damage to the player’s base. Even another player in a multiplayer survival game counts as a structural threat if they’re able to damage the player’s base. Structural challenges are ongoing since players must continue to defend and repair their bases.
Design risk-reward mechanics to encourage players to face and complete the challenge. Survival games must push the player into leaving the safety of their base to find resources or engage in other aspects of the game. Balancing the amount of risk that a player undergoes with the reward they receive aids that encouragement. Short and defined challenges require defined loot, such as access to a new weapon or a new type of resource. Ongoing challenges must rely on other types of rewards, such as XP to level up a skill or a new crafting blueprint to make more advanced gear. Match the risk-reward mechanic with the difficulty systems.
Find the balance between a challenge that is too hard and a challenge that is too easy. Challenges must be fair, overall. Tying the difficulty of challenges to zones helps the player prepare. Each time they’re about to enter a new region, they know that there’s a good chance that they’ll struggle for a while until they adapt. Not every player learns as quickly as others, however. Use adaptive difficulty systems to scale the difficulty based on a player’s skill level. Difficulty game modes must include reducing or increasing challenges based on a player’s needs. Keep challenges variable by throwing in hazards.
Create unpredictable challenges by designing environmental hazards. A survival game that only presents static challenges becomes stale after a while. A survival game where a sudden sandstorm sweeps through, potentially destroying the player and their base, is far more exciting. Use variability to ensure no one knows when the hazard is coming. Hazards must change over time, too. As the player grows stronger, scale the difficulty of the challenge to keep the experience fresh instead of predictable. Using time constraints is an effective method of keeping hazards fresh.
Implement time-based mechanics to make challenges even more exciting. A night-day cycle is a basic form of time-keeping, but in a survival game, it offers a chance to add tension. Dangerous enemies that only spawn at night keep the player working hard during the day, so they return home on time with their goods. Time-based mechanics work with hazards, too. Include a countdown timer or use environmental indicators to hint that something big is coming to increase the amount of dread that the player feels. Time-based mechanics drive the pressure to find resources before things get worse.
Resource scarcity is the cornerstone of any survival game challenge. A player is always on the hunt for food, water, and resources that make their life easier. Design resource scarcity to push players to seek new areas or to interact with other types of challenges. Determine the “why” behind the scarcity, too. Wastelands don’t happen naturally. Use the environment, found items, or local NPCs to tell the story. One explanation is the presence of an enemy threat.
Design enemy threats with intention. In a survival game, wildlife, monsters, and human NPCs aren’t just hanging around for no reason. It’s typically because they’re guarding a resource. Enemy threats offer direct challenges to the player. Keep the enemies unique to make them feel more realistic. Not every enemy shoots on sight, for instance. Offer up different ways to approach an enemy to let players handle the challenge how they want. Consider how dynamic events influence enemies on top of other challenges.
Include dynamic events to break up the predictability of challenges in a survival game. Dynamic events happen at any moment and affect everything from combat to a person’s base. They’re the reason a tornado is suddenly gathering speed at the edge of the hills or a roaming zombie horde that is passing by. Dynamic events provide enough variability to make any challenge that much more exciting. Survival games thrive on unpredictability and including dynamic events increases player satisfaction.
Designing challenges for a survival game isn’t easy since so many of the challenges impact and intersect with each other. A method to keep the design of a challenge clean is to write clear documentation on the survival game design document. Lay out the type of challenge category that the challenge is, then the mechanics required to create the challenge, and then finally whether it influences any other challenges. Name them and even go so far as to use color-coded organization if it helps.
An advanced documentation tip is to use tables to track each challenge’s scalability and intersection with other challenges. Studying survival game design templates helps, too. They provide a framework for how to lay out a challenge. Fill in the template with the game’s original challenges, and then include additional sections as needed. Keep the challenge design modular to scale easily in the future.
How challenging should a survival game be?
A survival game should be challenging enough that players feel constantly pressured. Building and upholding tension is what drives players to engage with the various gameplay loops. Create this tension by adjusting the challenge based on core gameplay loops, player progression, resource systems, environmental hazards, enemy difficulty, and tying all those challenges into the level design.
Determine how challenging a survival game must be by first designing its core gameplay loops. Survival games encompass systems such as hunger and thirst, creating shelter, and exploring the world for resources. The game mustn’t be too challenging from the start since players need to learn how to play the game first. Present early, small challenges first, then scale each of the gameplay loops as the game progresses.
Keep a balance in mind when designing the challenge level of the game. Player death is one of the ways in which survival games severely punish players who don’t plan ahead. Yet, death mechanics must be balanced to give players the chance to recover. It’s possible to lose hours of progress, so the challenge level must be kind enough to allow players to recoup on their losses quickly. Dropping a loot bag instead of losing all their items forever, for instance.
An example of adding challenge to a survival game without being unfair is adding a spoilage timer to certain consumables such as food. The timer informs the player of the risk of losing out on the consumable if they don’t use it soon. It drives them to find more food or ingredients to replace the consumable once it’s used or spoiled. Since the item doesn’t have permanence, the spoilage timer mechanic increases the tension.
A survival game must be challenging but not so challenging that it alienates players. Not every player is particularly skillful. Even skilled players struggle with certain aspects of survival games. Design the overall challenge of the game with a difficulty path that gradually increases. Offer levels or quests that provide extreme challenges to interested players, but don’t make the entire game a grueling experience.
Some players simply enjoy building bases, for example. They’re less interested in the punishing challenges that a survival game offers and instead want to just build a beautiful base. Provide different difficulty modes to accommodate how a player wants to engage with the game. The Forest does this by providing several difficulty modes, including a peaceful mode that allows players to just roam around the map and build.
Determine how challenging resource scarcity must be in the survival game. Resources are a vital part of survival game design since they impact so many other elements of the game. An extremely challenging survival game keeps even common resources scarce. Give players the chance to understand how resource scarcity works in the game by gradually increasing the rarity of resource spawns.
A way to lessen the challenge of a survival game is by adding automation mechanics. As players progress in the game, there are certain activities they won’t want to do anymore. These elements are typically associated with early gameplay. Consider adding automation mechanics to allow players to focus on new gameplay experiences instead of being bogged down by older loops that they’ve grown tired of.
Determine how challenging environmental hazards play a part in the survival game. A sandstorm presents an easy challenge by simply making it difficult for players to see. A harder challenge is when the sandstorm drains the player’s stamina meter. Hazards increase the game’s challenge overall. Decide how many hazards to use and how they impact the player to increase or decrease the challenge of the game.
Design enemy encounters to scale the challenge of the game when needed. Crafting survival games don’t rely on enemies as much as a survival horror game. When using enemies in a crafting survival game, ensure that the enemies allow players to interact with them how they want. Players have the option of fighting or running, for instance. Survival horror games must lean into enemy design, making each one an unforgettable experience.
Keep difficulty scaling in mind when designing all the challenges presented in the game, as well as, the overall challenge of the survival game. Unless marketed as such, survival games mustn’t act as the next Dark Souls game. Always consider how each challenge increases instead of designing the challenge to be at its most difficult level from the start.
Consider how biomes reflect the challenge of the overall game. Biome transitions are an effective way of informing players of high-challenge areas. A calm and relaxing biome is an effective region for players to learn how to play, but a biome with extreme temperatures tells the player to prepare for a challenging experience.
Survival games are different from RPGs or action games. In a RPG, players have defined enemies and goals. In a survival game, a player faces ongoing threats that increase over time. The goal posts to survive the situation are always moving. Determine what makes the player vulnerable, then create scaling challenges to exploit it.
In a RPG or action game, players win by defeating enemies or bosses. The overall challenge level of a survival game focuses instead on the ability of the player to make a defendable base, to grow enough food, or to find resources to make themselves stronger. Share your preferred methods for determining the overall challenge of a survival game in the comments.
How important is theme to design of survival games?
Theme is important to the design of survival games because it establishes a memorable identity. Survival game development scales on the easier side of game development, and it offers an effective way of learning how to make games for beginners. Because of that, a lot of survival games are made each year. It’s the theme of a survival game that makes it stand out from the rest.
Themes drive interest. A standard survival game set on an island doesn’t sound too exciting, but a survival game set on an island filled with cannibals and mutants is way more intriguing. Define a theme to determine who the game’s audience is geared toward. Choosing a popular theme, such as fantasy or science fiction, drives interest in the game.
Determine the game’s theme first when designing the survival game since it establishes many game design decisions in the future. Coherence to the theme matters since it ensures everyone is on the same page with the overall goal and view of the game. It creates a better experience for the player, too. Imagine playing a survival game set in medieval times but the UI uses odd futuristic text and neon colors.
The player won’t find that satisfying. Drift too far from the theme, and the game risks becoming a Frankenstein’s monster. Too many different parts creating a whole that doesn’t satisfy anyone. Include the theme in the survival game design document and refer to it often to ensure everyone remains aware of it, especially when designing the game’s mechanics.
Determine the game’s mechanics based on the theme. A theme provides the background and context that makes designing mechanics easier. A survival game with a post-apocalyptic theme requires mechanics related to radiation poisoning, scrapping materials, and traversing a ruined city. It’s challenging to know what mechanics are needed without first understanding the theme. It’s challenging to design dangers.
The survival game’s theme impacts resource and enemy design, too. A survival game set on the moon with a science fiction theme isn’t going to have the same resources as a survival game with a medieval theme. Tie resources to the theme to make them realistic. The theme determines enemy design. Mutant enemies make sense in an irradiated post-apoc world but not in a survival game with an underwater theme, for example. Use environmental storytelling to establish the theme.
Environmental storytelling is an effective way to establish the theme of the game without relying on direct exposition. Survival games don’t always have NPCs to provide the exposition. Follow Bethesda’s lead in creating effective environmental storytelling through the theme. The studio uses skeletons poised in certain ways to tell a story in its post-apoc world, for instance. It provides enough detail to let players come up with their own stories, which is a far more immersive experience.
A survival game’s theme impacts level design, too. When a survival game uses a wild west theme, the level design mustn’t use medieval-era assets or props that make the theme’s identity unclear. That goes for environmental storytelling, too. Avoid using props and assets that don’t make sense for the theme.
Determine a survival game’s theme early because of its impact on visual design. One of the easiest ways to confuse players is to present a game with a medieval theme only to use science fiction visual design elements. Consider elements of visual design such as text font, UI color, shaders and filters, and anything else that reinforces the theme. Design the UI next once establishing the visual design based on the theme.
Match the game’s theme and visual design with the UI, even when a minimalistic approach is used. The UI is what sells the theme. It determines whether the player has a jarring experience or a cohesive one. Hologram panels in a medieval-themed survival game break immersion for the player, for example. Have fun with the UI design and allow the team’s creativity to flow.
Determine the narrative theme of the survival game to influence design choices. The theme of the game doesn’t only impact its visual design. It influences the game’s narrative. A survival game with a theme about societal collapse, such as in a post-apoc theme, focuses on narrative beats about hostile factions, moral dilemmas, and isolation. It prompts designers to think about each element of the story and how they make sense within the game’s theme.
A survival game’s theme is important because it impacts player progression and how the challenges become more difficult, too. Challenges must make sense for the theme. An alien invasion in a medieval-themed game is a little far-fetched. Focus the theme on realistic boundaries and find ways to scale them. A radiation zone increases over time due to a radiation storm polluting new areas, for instance.
Determine how the theme impacts player progression. Player’s progress in survival games through better gear and more durable resources. The gear and resources have to make sense with the theme. A simple farmer in a survival game based in medieval times mustn’t suddenly know how to craft a jetpack, for instance. Tie the progression with the theme to keep the survival game grounded and realistic.
What mechanics are used in survival game design?
Mechanics used in survival game design revolve around the main principles of the genre–harvesting, crafting, and combat. Many times, mechanics tie the different principles together. A player uses a harvesting mechanic to get resources that allow them to craft a new weapon, for instance. When designing mechanics, keep in mind that they must be part of the core gameplay experience as well as extend to dynamic events.
The core gameplay experience in a survival game follows an overarching loop. A player harvests, they craft, and then they use what they craft to defend themselves. Determine the major mechanics the game requires to satisfy the basic gameplay loop. Then extend those mechanics to dynamic events, or instances that require a specific or unique mechanic. A player crafts a climbing tool, which now requires a climbing mechanic, for instance.
Expand the mechanics for the survival based on other survival game features the game includes. A popular feature that most survival games have is the ability to build a base. That requires a whole new set of mechanics such as terraforming, component snapping, and base health and damage variables. Along with base building, mechanics must include interacting with environmental systems.
Design environmental system mechanics to make the world feel alive and a real threat to the player. Day/night cycles are the simplest mechanic to include. It gives the player a sense of passing time, which allows designers to include seasons. Use the day/night cycle to influence other aspects of the game, too. Enemies that only spawn at night and present a greater threat, for instance.
Build off of day/night and season mechanics by using weather mechanics. Sudden storms or droughts influence the yield of crops that a player grows. Certain types of survival games, such as those set in an irradiated world, have an opportunity to bring in weird weather elements that challenge the player in other ways. Radiation storms offer a whole new wealth of mechanics to design, such as radiation poisoning and resistance. Determine how levels impact the need of certain mechanics.
Approach level design by asking what mechanics the player is going to need to make it to the other side. All the different hazards, enemies, and terrain challenges require specific mechanics. Even certain types of resources require certain tools to harvest them. A level that features a rare mineral requires the player to climb up to it or heat up an area to harvest it, for instance.
Environmental mechanics offer opportunities to bring in variety to the game. Adding in several different ways to traverse a level by using different traversal mechanics gives the player freedom to explore how they want, for example. Add in weather events, such as a sandstorm, and now the player has to use a unique set of mechanics involving the survival of that specific hazard.
Determine how the player format influences the type of mechanics required in the survival game. A single player game that focuses on isolation and self-reliance has a different focus on mechanics compared to a multiplayer game that focuses on combat and PVP. A solo survival game must consider mechanics that allow them to progress on their own.
Mechanics for solo players in a survival game must include skill progression. They have no one but themselves to get out of tricky situations, so having skills that allow them to grow stronger helps them become self-reliant. Since there aren’t any other players for the player to interact with, AI threats become more important. Design enemy mechanics to pressure players and amp up the stakes.
Mechanics for multiplayer survival games focus on social mechanics. PVP and PVE are at the heart of multiplayer mechanics. They determine how players interact with each other, and how their combined efforts affect the world. Include other quality of life mechanics such as shared storage and the ability to build a base together to make players feel as though they’re part of the same community. Then find ways to break that trust.
PVP mechanics primarily revolve around resource scarcity. Players that need a certain type of rare resource have to compete with other players to get their hands on it. Determine the different ways that players are able to compete with one another. Player-versus-player combat is a popular choice, but there are some games, such as Ark: Survival Evolved, that allow players to go to battle with one another using dinosaurs.
Consider whether the use of procedural generation mechanics improves the survival game or makes it lose focus. Procedural generation is an effective mechanic when it comes to quickly spawning enemies, loot, or even weather events. It keeps the game random, which catches the player off guard and prevents the game from becoming stale. Use procedural generation mechanics with caution, however.
Relied upon too heavily, procedural generation feels wrong. Randomly spawning a place of interest in a level without any context only makes the POI feel out of place. It doesn’t add to the mystery of the experience. Even worse, props and assets spawned randomly give away the fact that they were spawned procedurally. Ensure that everything randomly spawned makes sense for it to do so.
Design player progression mechanics by focusing on elements such as skill trees, crafting tiers, and unlockable abilities. Survival games mirror RPGs in the sense that players get access to new gear or craftables as they grow stronger. Determine how players reach those milestones with progression mechanics.
Progression mechanics fall under two categories–Horizontal and vertical. Horizontal progression requires players to head out into the world and explore it to find better gear or crafting recipes. This type of progression is ideal for survival games since it pushes the player to interact with the world. Vertical progression empowers existing gear, making them stronger or giving them unlockable abilities.
Build on existing survival gameplay mechanics to make the game unique. Consider classic mechanics such as insanity, hallucinations, or psychological stress when designing a survival horror game. Find ways to make them fresh so that the game stands out from others similar to it. The player starts to hallucinate missing items in their inventory, for instance.
Extend these mechanics to other aspects of the game, too. Overharvesting impacts the yield of resources out in the world or makes a certain NPC faction angry. Making classic mechanics unique in the survival game helps define its identity. Study the following games to see how they put their own spin on classic survival game mechanics.
- Don’t Starve uses a sanity meter to drive its feelings of isolation.
- Subnautica uses oxygen mechanics to increase the tension each time a player goes beneath the sea.
- Project Zomboid uses a boredom mechanic to encourage players to stay active.
Focus on creating new and original mechanics, too. While studying other games lays out a foundation for how to design reinvented mechanics, give the team opportunities to innovate. Rely on the survival game’s theme and its level design to find opportunities to create those new mechanics. It’s possible that the game sets a new standard for survival games moving forward.
Where to find a survival game design template?
Find a survival game design template through various online resources. A survival game design template lays out the different sections related to game design for a survival game. All teams have to do is fill those sections in, while adding in new sections that the template doesn’t cover. There are several resources that offer survival game design templates such as GitHub, indie game developer community forums, game design blogs, and marketplaces at some game engines.
Search GitHub to find several game design templates geared toward survival games and other types of games. GitHub uses a version control system that allows users to see all the changes made to the template. Search through the different versions to find a template that fits the team’s needs. These templates are typically made by other designers and developers and are open-source and free to use.
Look through resources provided by TIGSource, r/gamedev, and GameDev.net to find survival game templates that come from peers. Some of these peers are professional while others are indie designers. These communities allow its users to provide help to one another and advice. Use them to get advice on specific mechanics or other elements of the survival game design process along with finding templates.
Discover online repositories that serve to collect specific information for educational or preservation purposes. These repositories curate game design templates, allowing anyone to examine how past studios laid out their design work. The examples allow design teams to create their own templates from there, based on a professional studio’s example.
Search through game design blogs that feature real professional designers and developers. They rely on a designer or developer’s actual experience to curate tutorials, workbooks, and other free resources. Each aspect of game design is explained, allowing teams to easily begin the process of designing their survival game.
Some game design blogs partner with a professional designer to give an exclusive play-by-play for creating game design documents. Take the lessons learned through the course and apply them to the provided template to tailor it to a survival game. Learning from professionals instead of just peers in a community forum ensures the team builds a strong foundation for survival game design.
Search through the forums and marketplaces for game engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine to find survival game design templates. The forums for game engines are filled with helpful advice, both from professionals and those who are experimenting with the engine. Search for a survival game design template in Unity’s Asset Store or Unreal Engine’s Marketplace to see what’s available.
Discover other benefits of using the marketplaces and forums in the process. Both Unity’s Asset Store and Unreal Engine’s Marketplace provide more than just game design template advice. They have systems and assets that help speed up the design process. Let us know your preferred method of finding survival game design templates in the comments.
What is an example of a survival game design document?
An example of a survival game design document is a standard game design document tailored to creating a survival game. A game design document lays out each section of the game, such as its mechanics, the technical requirements to play it, and its narrative, and allows the game design team to fill out each section. The benefit is that the team is able to refer to the game design document at any time to ensure any new systems align with it.
A game design document, at its core, keeps the game’s vision on track. It ensures that the developing team understands how the game must look, feel, and behave. Design teams either create their own survival game design document from scratch or tailor a game design document template to their needs. Below is Unity’s free game design document that is adaptable to a survival game.
List out all the design choices for the gameplay of the survival game in the section related to gameplay. The main principles of a survival game must be included here. Crafting, harvesting, and combat goes in this section, along with any other related gameplay features. Base-building and completing quests go in this section, for instance. Go into detail on the key features of these gameplay elements in the next section.
The key features section of a survival game design document includes all the game elements that attract a player to the game. These elements feature specific mechanics, gameplay, or story that make the game appear unique and exciting. A key feature is the ability to tame animals to perform tasks for the player, for instance. Lay out player and technical specification expectations in the next section.
Determine the technical specifications that players must have to play the game at optimal settings. Change the specifications as needed as the game becomes more complex. Consider the multiplayer aspect of a survival game if it exists and how it impacts technical specs. Expected player count plays a vital role in determining tech specs and how to handle servers.
Laying out the multiplayer aspect of a survival game allows teams to understand just how complex it is. It’s possible the team decides to remove multiplayer from the game because their budget doesn’t support it. Understand the technical aspect of a multiplayer survival game such as designing with server stability, matchmaking, and data synchronizing in mind.
Include a section on the survival game design document for weather hazards and other elements related to the environment. Explain how these elements impact other systems in the game and what mechanics players need to survive them.
Fill out a section related to all the mechanics of the survival game on the game design document. Describe how a player uses those mechanics to win challenges. Since the game’s design changes over development, use version numbers for each new change to keep everyone on the same page.
Add a section in the survival game design document related to recent survival game trends. Time permitting, examine those trends and design them for the survival game to see if it makes sense to include them. Think of it as a “wishlist” section for certain elements of the game, budget and time allowing for their inclusion into the game.
Keep a separate section of the survival game design document of failures or mistakes to avoid. Research what other survival games have gotten wrong, especially from a design perspective. Then add in a section of what and how to avoid making those same mistakes. Learning from a game’s failures as much as its successes helps to avoid following in their footsteps.
