The Xbox Game Pass has a lot to offer for fans of virtual survival vapor.

Dayz once started him: Hype for survival games. Since almost a decade you are indispensable. Especially on the PC, more precisely in the Early-Access program of Steam, a representative after another appears, only the few are worth your money. For the titles that are in the Xbox Game Pass, luckily you do not have to pay anything – so not directly at least, for that you pay the subscription fees. Microsoft s service has surprisingly many games in Petto, where the struggle for survive an important, if not playing the central role. The best of them we introduce you to this special.

ARK: Survival Evolved Explorer s Edition

Platforms: PC, Cloud

ARK: Survival Evolved is one of the most famous survival games at all. His trademark: the dinos. Here you not only explore a world, procure food, creates tools as well as weapons and builds a base, you also tame giant odors as well as other primeval resources. They serve them on the one hand as a mount, but on the other hand, they are also enormously useful both in resource procurement as well as in combat. With a triceratop, for example, wonderfully whole forests can be roded.

It is especially nice that the Explorer s Edition of ARK: Survival Evolved is included in the Xbox Game Pass. Not only does the main game, but also the first three extensions Scorched Earth , Aberration and Extction . So there is a lot of content for subscribers, so you can spend a lot of time in the world-dominated world – both alone and in the multiplayer, where ARK is not designed on the singpleplayer, but clearly focuses on people who are in common and against Other people want to play on servers.

Astroner

Platforms: PC, Console, Cloud

Astroneeer is a survival game without fighting. You play an astronaut that crashed on a strange, inhospitable planet. Your task: survival – who would have thought that? To this end, you operate abundant crafting and collects resources. The peculiarity of the game is that you can deform the environment. You can dig deep trenches and form mountains.

The game world is generated procedure and not only consists of a planet. Once you have built a spaceship, you can fly to other sky bodies of the solar system. A total of seven planets await you that you either explore solo or with up to three friends.

CONAN EXILES

Platforms: PC, Console, Cloud

Conan Exile has many similarities with ARK: Survival Evolved, but plays in a completely different setting. It is based on the fantasy world created by the writer Robert E. Howard and who became a broad audience with the two Conan films with Arnold Schwarzenegger. You are an exilant who has to survive in a dangerous environment full of monsters and enemy people. From found materials you make tools and weapons. Then you build a shelter. Of course you have to take care of the food supply.

In addition to the classic survival elements, Conan Exiles offers a Loot progression that reminds of role-playing games. There are even real dungeons with boss greins in which their valuable booty can do. The combat system is clearly more tactical than in other survival games, even reminiscent in approaches to Dark Souls. Another special feature is the slave system. Yes, you can hold in Conan Exiles slaves. This does not mean other players, but NPCs. You can do them to craftsmen, but also to fighters that accompany you protect your excursions into the dangerous wilderness.

Grounded

Platforms: PC, Console, Cloud

In contrast to all other games in this list, Grounded is not finished yet. The game of Obsidian Entertainment, a developer who is otherwise known for role-playing games, has been published 2020 as an early access version and nothing has changed in this status despite numerous updates. But even if it is not finished yet, it s really good.

Grounded puts you in the skin of an ant size shredded teen. Solo or in Koop mode with other players you fight in the home garden. Here you have to take eight especially before spinning. If you have an arachnophobia, you just activate a mode that makes much less disgusting-looking creatures from the eight-legged quirters. Otherwise, the usual survival crystal awaits you: collect resources, crafting, base construction and fighting.

Minecraft

Platforms: console

Sure: When it comes to the best survival games in the Xbox Game Pass, then one of the most successful titles of all time distributed by Microsoft itself may not be missing: Minecraft is the mother of modern crafting and sandbox games. It is happy to forget, but apart from creative mode, Minecraft is in the core a game in which it goes on survival. Anyone looking for no shelter on the first day, in which one is best simply dared into a mountain or a cave barricaded, is finished in the night of zombies, spiders and the famous creepers.

We probably no longer need to explain the fascination of Minecraft. Not only does it have a motivating progression because you can find more valuable materials, making better weapons, tools and co, making your random-generated world significantly redesigned. Whether in single or multiplayer, minecraft is simply a fun cabin, which captivates hundreds of hours. The iconic block look is certainly taste matter.

no man s sky

Platforms: PC, Console, Cloud

No Man s Sky had anything but a good start in 2016. The expectations of the Open World game with the trillion planet comprehensive universe were huge despite the fact that it was developed only by a small indie team. Well, Hello Games has done everything wrong with that time, that was the way. The release version could not even fulfill the expectations in the approach because many of the announced features simply lacked.

Everything is much more rosy more than five years later. Hello Games has given numerous updates not only many of the promised content, but also implemented features that were previously not even announced. Today you can no longer explore empty planets, but also build your own bases, manage freighters, fulfill missions, even mayor of a city and tame animals. And one end of the update replenishment does not seem to be in sight. Granted, the survival fight may not be so enormous in normal game mode, so no man s sky is far from the square in this list. And it is always important to play value.

State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition

Platforms: PC, console. Cloud

Zombies are a recurrent element in survival games. As mentioned above: the title with which the hype started around the genre has been DAYZ. This is not found in this list because only the console version is included in the Xbox Game Pass, which does not cut out very well. Much better is because State of Decay 2, which goes in a different direction. There is no persistent online world and also no PVP. In the multiplayer it is still playable. At least you can get friends to you in the world so that they grab the arms.

In State of Decay 2, you do not play a character, but directs the skill of a whole group survivor in the zombiePocalypse. You always control one of them directly and over the menu you change between the figures. You are looking for a shelter and then pulls out into the world to find resources and equipment. This gives you the opportunity to better defend you against the undead, and expand your basis. At the same time it is important to leave the morale of your troupe not sash into the basement.

Subnautica series

Platforms: PC, Console, Cloud

The two subnautica games are the best of what the survival genre has to offer. It is all the more gratifying that they are included in the Xbox Game Pass. In both titles you are mainly under water. On the strange planet 4546b there is as good as no land masses. All the stupid is that they crashed them in the first subnautica here with your spaceship and the only survivor are. At the beginning, only a small rescue capsule serves as a shelter, later you have a real basis built.

Until the cozy lower sea is a long way full of dangers. Due to the virtual ocean, not only small fish swim, which serve you as food sources, but also larger robbers. The farther her in the game progresses, the better equipment you are using you, which it allows to dive deeper. And the further your gene seabed comes, the darker will be the game, so that at some point it even mutates a kind of horror game – and that, where the rest of the game is quite colorful. It experiences an exciting story without quests and elaborate script sequences. This also applies to the successor Below Zero, who plays in the Arctic region of 4546B and offers all in all more of the same, but also from the same grandiose.

terraria

Platforms: Console, Cloud

In the past, it was often called: Terraria is Minecraft in 2D. At first glance, that also likes voices, but just on the first. The game from Re-Logic does not only reveal that your resources collects, crafts and builds. Struggles play a much greater role here than in mineraffe. There are real dungeons and boss fights with special mechanics. Here is less about creativity and much more about achieving the end of the game by defeating all bosses and become a strong hero.

Although the technique of terraria is very simple, explore the procedural generated worlds makes enormous fun because there is a lot to discover. You never know what to meet you if you dig through the soil. If you like the basic principle, but you would like to have a little more variance, we can recommend you the very similar starbound, which has a sci-fi setting. However, this is only in English and only on the PC, while terraria is not only playable on the consoles but also by cloud for game-pass ultimate subscribers. It is also the much more rounder game.

The Long Dark

Platforms: PC, console. Cloud

All games mentioned here either have any fantasy element or science fiction scenario. Maybe you want to fight survival in a grounded, realistic world? Then the Long Dark is just right for you. There are neither zombies nor aliens or monsters and they are not shrunk. Instead, you are traveling alone in the wild. Everywhere is snow, it is cursed cold and you somehow make sure you are not free. On top of that, wolves and bears make life difficult.

On the one hand, the Long Dark offers survival mode, in which it just goes to survive as long as possible. Alternatively, there are the story episodes. Of those four pieces have appeared so far. The fifth and last episode will be submitted as a free update. The story is about the bush pilot Will Mackenzie, who was traveling with the scientist Doctor Astrid Greenwood. Over the north Canadian wilderness, the two fall off due to a mysterious flash of light and are then separated. On the one hand, you have to secure your survival and, on the other hand, find Greenwood and the mystery of a silent apocalypse lifts.