My connection to the “survival crafting” genre began with Minecraft, but the genre stretches all the way back to 1992’s UnReal World, which makes clear the genre’s roots in roguelike games.
A big gap is “Enshrouded”. I was going to try either Enshrouded or Palworld, but someone in the family wanted to try Palworld, and so that’s the one I went with.
Here’s the games I did play:
Nightingale (2024)
I tried and tried with this game. It ran poorly on my older computer; in 2024 I upgraded, and it ran better. Nightingale takes places in a re-imagined 19th century. Portals to alternate realities have opened, and daring explorers are setting forth to tame these new lands. These new lands are fighting back. Fortunately for you, a kindly demon is there to guide you through the use of portals and how to survive in these new lands. After that, it’s up to you.
I did appreciate the steampunk-ish setting of the game; it’s essentially similar to the backstory for Malifaux, the tabletop miniatures game I play. I have been looking for a decent Edwardian/Victorian-era MMO for a long time.
I was eventually able to survive for a time in the tutorial worlds in the beta, but then came the early release. I loaded into the game, started punching trees, and was killed by a pack of wolves seconds after starting the game. And that was my last experience with Nightingale.
Palia (2024)
What I thought it would be: A collection of Free Realms-style minigames set in a cozy town.
What it really was: A game where you build a house nobody will ever see.
In the far, far future, humanity has died out, leaving only enigmatic ruins and ancient technologies behind. In the intervening millennia, an alien, humanoid species has colonized the planet and, Galaxy Quest-like, has opted to recreate humanity’s civilization as best they can. Suddenly, you appear — a human from the distant past! You are warmly accepted into the community and shown to your plot of land, given instructions to clear it, and a list of folks to talk to.
It’s a game meant to be a gathering place for friends; a chat room overlaid upon a crafting game. There’s all the standard crafting activities — mining, farming, catching insects, fishing, hunting animals — all of which lead to building new items for your home. An extensive cash shop allows you to buy a wide variety of outfits to wear when visiting other people’s homes.
Without a goal or friends who played, I just couldn’t keep thinking of reasons to log in and put in the time. The game runs well and is pretty. Just, for me, dull.
Valheim (2021)
In Valheim, you are a Viking who has died but, for bureaucratic reasons, has not accrued enough hero points to grant you instant access to Valhalla. Worry not, Odin has granted you another chance to prove yourself in the land of Valheim, where you will explore and conquer various biomes until you finally have enough holes punched on your Bifrost ticket to complete your journey to Ragnarok.
This game was a lot of fun when it first came out; my static gaming group devoured the content and we made it to the end of the content, the Plains biome, in record time. After which, most of the group scattered to other games, leaving me and a friend to do it all again.
The Mistlands broke me. The developers designed a biome so deadly and with so little reward that there was no fun at all in the game. I think my friend completed it; I did not.
Another friend said he was spinning up a new Valheim world; would I be interested? SURE! And it was amazing fun, until I rammed up against Mistlands again. But the others pushed through to the fire biome of the Ashlands and I was able to use their resources to craft Mistlands gear to help.
The Ashlands broke everyone. The developers are promising something much more punishing for their Deep North biome. But I’m out. Valhalla was never for me, after all.
Palworld (2024)
The best survival/crafting game that I played in 2024 shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has read my blog. Or watched my YouTube channel.
In Palworld, you’re a shipwreck survivor who has washed ashore on an island in a group of islands anchored by a huge, sky scraping tree. You’d think that you could see this tree from outside the island group, but nope. It’s hidden somehow.
On these islands are Pals, strange creatures you can capture and… Oh, come on. Everyone knows it’s “Pokemon, except survival/crafting, and your Pals have guns”. If the Pokemon Company had taken their best (imho) game, Pokemon Legends: Arceus, and made it into a survival/crafting game, it would be Palworld.
The game has the standard base building core; the vanilla settings gives you up to three bases, which you’ll want to place near resources. You’ll need a lot of resources. There’s dungeons to clear. There’s open world bosses. There’s instanced bosses. There’s breeding. There’s a whole manufacturing game, and your Pals can help with that. There’s NPC factions, Pal raids, actual raid bosses that come in difficulties that you can solo and others you’ll need a group, a wide variety of ways of breeding the perfect Pal for the perfect fight… it’s exhausting, how much there is to do.
This is what I look for in a survival/crafting game: a reason to start the game up each day. I’m almost done with the new Feywild expansion; I just need to kill the raid boss a couple more times to get a good breeding pair, and then take on the new tower boss on hard mode, and then I’ll be done.
I love this, though — new content drops, takes a couple of weeks of intense gaming (or a few months of casual gaming) to clear, and then free to enjoy the game casually, work on that breeding. My family was playing for awhile, but they dropped off; I kept playing.
Just for fun, here’s the video of me defeating the latest raid boss, Xenolord. I spent all day yesterday breeding Frostallions, ice-themed winged horses, to have the perfect attack stats, and I was riding Chillet, which makes my attacks Dragon-type, and had four Gobfins in the party, that multiply my player damage. I had all Hexolite armor and legendary weapons (from the previous expansion, unfortunately). I only lost two Frostallions and my ride. And now I have my own Xenolord, “Zenny”, to ride around on.
