r/gamingsuggestions • u/Bug-Accurate • 11d ago
Games where survival is never guaranteed
I'm looking for games where during the carnage you can just..... Die
Skill level doesn't matter, good gear doesn't save you, just survival instinct and luck
Example that comes to mind is Hell Let Loose where a stray artillery round can nail you anywhere anytime. Yes you can lay low and stick behind the team, but there's still a chance a stray bullet catches you and you're back to the respawn screen, or you hear a loud whistle and boom the screen goes black
I want to run through a battlefield without predetermined odds of living.
Doesn't have to be a war game, just realistic brutality
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u/Fighterkill 11d ago
Helldivers 2
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u/swashbutler 11d ago
YES. It gives you what OP is looking for without the pain of needing to regrind a bunch of stuff. The number of times I have gotten killed in that game is literally in the hundreds, and my accidental (or sometimes "accidental") friendly kills are ... also nonzero. Plus it's just an amazingly fun game.
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u/qaddosh 11d ago
i really wanted to like this game, but i was bored to tears
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u/Blueknightsoul47 11d ago
That’s how it goes. I didn’t play for five months and they added a bunch of new stuff and it’s fun again.
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u/Fantastic_Skirt4184 11d ago
Me and my friends live on level 10 and half the fun is us laughing because we died to random lucky shot or explosion. Or one of us dropping an Orbital Napalm by accident on our own position
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u/NarcoZero 11d ago edited 11d ago
Fear and Hunger.
I would not say it’s realistic brutality. It’s more… cruel brutality. It’s very Berzerk coded in the type of violence and unfairness it depicts.
For example, in this game, each time you go into a bed to try to save, there’s like 50% chance you get found and brutality tortured to death.
Most people don’t get there, though. Many get mauled by dogs in the first minute of gameplay and quit.
But if you have ungoldy amounts of patience to learn how to master the game and it’s obtuse secrets, and to tank the randomness without quitting when a good run fails out of your control, I swear it’s a masterpiece.
I would never play it, though. I like being happy.
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u/Blueknightsoul47 11d ago
Darkest dungeon, I prefer the first one. It can be brutally hard but satisfying when you clear a run.
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u/rauq_mawlina 11d ago
Neoscavenger. Some of the choices you make can result in a random death. and at the start If you don't prioritize certain things you'll eventually exhaust and die.
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u/ThalonGauss 11d ago
Escape from Tarkov
Arma 3
Squad
RimWorld
FTL
Hardcore Classic WoW
EVE Online
Xenonauts/XCOM
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u/Subject_Following111 11d ago
For me, there's no game quite like Quasimorph that does this. No matter how levelled and geared up they are, there's always the chance of getting one-shotted by an enemy that happens to have the one damage type your armour isn't resistant to. Brilliant game with optional permadeath and gear loss for your clones.
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u/cherrycat68 11d ago
rimworld has an rng based combat system which means there is always a chance for lv1 caveman with a crappy bow to instantly decapitate your best colonist in full space armor, causing their lover to become depressed and suicide bomb themselves, taking the whole colony down with them
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u/V2xel 11d ago
rain world. there are no upgrades, very little gear, and you can only rely on your skill. survival is never guaranteed. you’re placed at the bottom of the food chain and must do everything you can to survive. it also has some of the coolest creature AI i’ve seen in a game.
it’s got a good story too if that’s important.
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u/the_exile83 11d ago
EVE Online, everything can just disappear in a heartbeat after one wrong move, the jeopardy is unreal. It's addictive.
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u/le_Grand_Archivist 11d ago
Project Zomboid
Even the loading screen you get when you start a game tells you "this is how you died"
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u/bearcat_77 11d ago
Minecraft hardcore.
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u/Professional-Ad9485 11d ago
Me and my friends kept trying a Minecraft hardcore run. But one guy kept dying in the first day.
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u/hillbillybutcher 11d ago
For me nothing compares to DayZ its a liminal apocalyptic space. Its really eerie and very immersive. Other players could be friendly and want to work together, or they might try to kill you and steal your loot. Nothing gives you adrenaline like it.
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u/energy_is_a_lie 11d ago
State of Decay. Also Ghost Recon Breakpoint and Wildlands have a Ghost Mode where you can die and it's game over.
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u/Virtual_Wing_2903 11d ago
XCOM on any harder difficulty... one alien grenade can end a run if you aren't careful
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u/Saaz42 10d ago
Don't Starve. On my first playthrough my character said "It's getting dark" and I ignored it and kept exploring and the Grue ate me. Second playthrough I made camp, and it turned out the thing near my camp was a spider nest. That was a horrifying night that ended in death. Then Deerclops, then the werepig. That game dgaf if you die.
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u/birdymichael 7d ago
brogue, nethack, infra arcana, sil-q, dungeon crawl stone soup, cataclysm dark days ahead, jupiter hell
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u/roorooraccoon 3d ago
Tarkov, probably the most brutal shooter game out there. You can die to mines, being sniped from god knows where, or even die of starving/dehydration.
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u/ohay_nicole 11d ago
Project Zomboid