It’s no longer the most urgent gold rush in PC games, but survival games continue to be regularly released, and older games continue to be regularly updated. It’s only natural then that we’ve taken some time out from foraging for edible berries to update our list of the best survival games for 2020.

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Even though it only hit Steam in 2018, and has only existed in any form since 2016, Raft feels like one of those survival games that has been in Early Access forever. That’s not a criticism, it’s just very much the mood the game has. It’s one of those ones you’ll play a bit of, forget about, and then look back a year later, only to find it’s grown a whole story and pigs you can fight. That gradual accretion of stuff is fitting, I suppose, as it’s exactly what Raft is about: gradually accreting stuff.

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Listen, never mind that sharks are not the mindlessly violent animals we’ve been trained to fear, and simply additional victims of mankind’s global vertebrate binge. Dismiss, please, the ongoing cultural rehabilitation of this toothy swimmer, who is statistically quite poor at killing humans. Ignore also their adorable habit of falling asleep when you hold them upside-down. Forget it, forget it all. No more lovey-dovey thoughts for these wondrous aquatic beings, more maligned than malignant. This is a list about videogame sharks. And videogame sharks are the baddies. Here are the 9 deadliest sharks in PC games.

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I have a real issue with the sea. That enormous blue conceals awful primal horrors which I can’t help but be fascinated by. So you can understand why I admire Raft, the survival game in which you try to stay alive on a rickety wooden craft constantly circled by a giant shark.

That shark is Raft’s principal antagonist and it sits at the centre of many of its survival mechanics (as observed by Steve Hogarty in his early access review of the game). Yet players have developed a strange relationship with it. “They talk to the shark and name it,” co-developer André Bengtsson tells me. So does his team: Bruce. “He gives you a kind of company out there, even though he’s trying to kill you.” (more…)

You ll have heard of Raft. It s the best open world survival crafting there is, for the singular reason that rather than having to run around to discover and excavate resources, they re all swept towards you on a never-ending tide of stuff. Plastic, wood, leaves, potatoes. All you have to do is catch the detritus with a hook on a string and then yank it towards you, so that it becomes part of your raft and your raft can grow larger and more elaborate.

Minecraft, for all its supposed complexity, is hamstrung by a rude insistence on making you walk around on foot like an idiot, checking under leaves for magic rocks or whatever the hell that game is about. Raft is a survival crafting game for the brilliant, but chronically lethargic creative mind, who would rather sit and let content wash over them than head out in search of it.

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Ever since Minecraft got us hooked on surviving its deadly nights and sinister, snickering foes over a decade ago, there have been wave upon wave of new survival games to scratch our deepest masochistic itches. Attempting to tackle them all at once, however, would probably lead to an early grave, so we’ve put together this list of the very best survival games on PC to help satisfy those cravings for Darwinian supremacy. Whether you love punching trees, surviving against the elements or simply stuffing your belly with as much grub as you can manage, there’s a survival game with your name on it.

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That squeaking noise is 2019 slowly deflating in the corner. You re done now, noble year. Thanks for trying. Uh-oh, I m getting introspective and thinky. I d better distract myself. With the holidays all but over, how did you manage to survive them? Tell me what you played and what sort of fun you had. I’ll go first! I survived with Portal 2.

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Don’t be scared. It’s OK. I’ve got you. Hold my hand. Tighter. Come on. We can do this together. You and me. Lets… Steam Chart.

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A lot of people first discover this Pulitzer Prize-winning* column via the Steam pages for their favourite games, and it’s always a pleasure to welcome in new readers to RPS’s most respected feature. So if you’re new, welcome! Please settle in and find out why Steam Charts is the industry’s most respected and revered games journalism.

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Words are ill-equipped to describe how dull this week’s Steam Charts truly are. Read on to see how I combat that. But also, thank goodness there’s at least the interesting feature that Plunkbat has, for the first time since it shot to the top of the charts on its release, dropped to third place. Its year-long grip on the top spot was beginning to waver in recent weeks, increasingly finding itself at #2 in the face of a big new release. Now its weakening dominance has seen it slip another spot down. Could Plunkles be seeing its rule coming to an end?

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