The best games like Minecraft to play in 2022

Don’t Starve tells you everything you need to know in the title. It’s a game about not starving, or, more accurately, surviving. Rather than giving you a blank slate like most other survival games, Don’t Starve is very overt in its tone. With a gothic, hand-drawn art style, Don’t Starve is bursting at the seams with personality. That doesn’t mean the game is any easier, though. Don’t Starve is still a brutal survival game, dropping you in the middle of a dark forest without any instructions or guidance. Thankfully, everything is procedurally generated, so if RNG isn’t on your side, you can always regenerate your island.

Rust is a multiplayer-only survival game where you not only need to worry about the threat of nature, but also of other players. You start with nothing more than a rock and torch, and from there, you’ll need to craft weapons and structures to protect yourself from other players and the beasts that roam the island. Cruel in every way possible, Rust will test your patience and persistence. You likely won’t survive more than a few minutes when you first awaken, with seasoned players scouring the island for new prey. If you’re looking for an authentic survival experience, though, it doesn’t get much better than Rust.

Oxygen Not Included comes courtesy of Klei Entertainment, the same indie studio behind Don’t Starve. It features the same signature art style as the game that preceded it, though provides a much different take on the survival genre. Instead of being trapped in the woods, you’re trapped in space. At the beginning of Oxygen Not Included, you take control of three duplicants who’ve become lost in an asteroid with only a few packets of breathable air. From there, your only goal is to survive, which includes setting up oxygen for your duplicants and ensuring they’re fed, and that they can, ahem, get rid of their waste.

The mechanics of ARK: Survival Evolved are surprisingly similar to those in Minecraft, but the look of the two couldn’t be more different. Your only goal in Survival Evolved is to survive after waking up naked on the island of ARK with nothing more than your wits to guide you. You’ll work your way up from punching trees all the way to crafting advanced weapons. It’s a survival game, if there ever was one, with advanced building, farming, hunting, and tribes. ARK: Survival Evolved conveys the authentic and often harsh realities of every individual’s fight to survive with each other in a shared territory. Your hut is in constant danger of looting and destruction, so you should never stray too far when performing daily tasks such as making a fire or gathering firewood because you never know when your enemies will strike.

Fallout 4’s massive, highly detailed world is impressive, but more impressive is its building system. The settlement system alone can take up all your time to the exclusion of all other factors of the game without detracting from your overall experience. It’ll take a hefty amount of time and effort to garner the capabilities to acquire items during gameplay so that you can break them down into valuable assets. These newly acquired parts become the building blocks for a whole new village. Although it’s clear Bethesda intended the settlement system as an optional feature in Fallout 4, it’s so in-depth that it feels like a game in its own right.