Success Rate for Survival/Crafting Games?

I had thought that there were so many survival/crafting or survival/zombie games that the new ones generally did very poorly, but I came across one called "Mist Survival" which already has over 1,700 reviews with an average of "very positive" in a little over a month, despite seemingly being a fairly typical zombie survival/crafting game with fairly typical graphics; and it's self-published by a dev with no other Steam games and hence probably no existing fan base or marketing; and it's in Early Access which usually doesn't help sales. Some devs claim that almost any survival game sells well, but that hadn't been my previous assumption (quite the opposite in fact), unless there's a new trend that has made almost all of them popular.

Here's "Mist Survival": https://store.steampowered.com/app/914620/Mist_Survival/

 

Just read the comment.

 

Which comment?

 

Steam comment, I read some and they spell out what's different, one thing is quality, consistency and listening. Seems like the survival genre hasn't had it's magnum opus yet.

My guess is that the genre get a number of player quickly exhausting bad game, sharing good games, and moving to the next experience, but not settling because they are no good (enough) one.

So the genre don't have big success because the formula hasn't been honed enough, and it's saturated with mediocre title. Keyword they used seems that they want an open world horror game, ie scarcity, tension, and surprise.

EDIT:
In fact, what's teh reference survival game? The one name everyone use?

 

Minecraft?

Unless a game uses habbit forming addiction patterns like e.g. World of Warcraft, I don't think a game ever can be "the one to stay with forever". Trying out something new once in a while is part of the fun, especially in survival games I'd argue, because you get new worlds to explore. As long as people don't look back at their time spent in the game with regret, I think a survival game that no one plays longer than 40 hours can be a total success.

 

Visually it looks better than most survival games I see on steam. Looks way sexier than 7 days to die, or any other indie zombie surival game I've seen. Plus, it looks fast and responsive -- like a game thats actually nice to play. Not your typical clunk fest held together by a vague promise of progressive RPG elements, which, once attained, leave the player feeling like they majorly wasted their time.

Plus there was a hot chick in there. Say what you want -- that's instant hook for all 12-50 year old boys.

 

It's really not. Watch the trailer again. Then watch others.

This is a sexy game. It's not AAA. It's not Dying Light. But it's damn sexy for an indie production. It's fast, it's slick, it's polished. It doesn't look like unity asset store flip flop kaka.

 

I read the comments, and I want to buy it now. Might be good when I'm burned out on 7DTD.

 

7 Days to Die was really popular, but now I see it recently have Mixed reviews

 

Mist is also single player, that lowers the bar in a lot of areas actually.

 

Actually that makes it a lot more interesting for me.

But I find it hard to time it right when to start playing an Early Access survival game. If I play too soon, I'm burned out on it before the game is even half finished, if I wait too long I go past the point where I care anymore, and If I start playing early-ish and then give it a longer pause, the development might have turned it into something I don't like anymore. I quite liked early iterations of 7dtd, but with the current gamemechanics and pacing I have completely lost interest in the game. It has become way too grindy and numbers-based for me. I don't like the "progression" stuff at all.

 

7DTD was very playable and enjoyable when it was first released and continues to be so but they've taken entirely too long to release new updates to the game while other good survival games that came out at the same time (eg The Forest and Subnautica) saw far more regular updates and have since become stable releases.

 

Survival is a genre split between multiplayer and single player.

Some multiplayer survival games:

• Ark
• Fortnite
• PUBG
• Rust

Some single player centric survival games:

• Minecraft
• Dying Light
• Fallout
• Don't Starve

Survival games are based around scavenging, crafting, resources etc. So pretty much the most popular realtime game type. Probably most popular game type ever, really. Also most competition.

Most games incorporate survival elements if we look closely enough so the lists above are simply well known examples. You will be competing with them, so when you ask about the success rate, you really want to be able to compete with any of the above. At first glance you haven't got a prayer of doing so, and this is where you think about your resources as a developer, your niche, and picking the right battles

Assuming it's a commercial goal, be prepared to give up a lot of what you initially wanted.

 

Some day I will take our mechanics and make a large open world survival game, some day

 

Sure, but I was referring to the large number of indie survival / crafting games - most of them pretty generic - which some devs are saying get decent sales anyway even if they're pretty generic. There are some examples of decent sales for that type of generic / bare bones variation, so I was wondering how general this is. The reviews for this type of thing tend to be overwhelmingly bad, but Premium Steamspy indicates that some / many of them get relatively good sales (tens of thousands of dollars) anyway.

 

Rimworld... sorta... is a survival crafting (management) game made in unity. It's a fantastic example of a highly addictive game with crafting and survival elements atleast, and bonus points for our beloved engine powering the game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/294100/RimWorld/

 

Just passing through... think maybe take a closer look at the role the mist plays in the game. That's not just a random word for the title but the heart of the usp for the game from what I have seen. Alright that's it.

 

Oh well minecraft, I didn't think of it, because, while it birth the genre, itself is a the grandfather of many different modern genre, all born from the frustration than minecraft wasn't a pure version of it. I think DAYz is the first high profile survival games and it seems all of them had the same trajectory as that one, promising but unfinished and does not know where to go, and get aimless progression, from rust to no man's sky, the grind is a recurring complaints. Then some game dabble in survival like element like zelda BOTW, and PUBG/fortnite turn the model upside down by offering time limited survival thrill, and progression mechanics with the storm (which is a push (aka going away from) not a pull (going toward to) which was brillantly solving the progression while keeping the freedom aspect).

So my own opinion is that something need to innovate into the progression of non battle royale survival.

So the question is are there any other perpetual progression games that worked?
- in solo?
- in multiplayer?

 

Not sure about perpetual progression. Many survival games can be completed...

 

Success in survival games is usually perpetual sustenance.

IMO if there has been a 'magnum opus' of survival to date it's Don't Starve. It's basically perpetual and forces you to adapt constantly. The multiplayer aspect was pretty great too. The complexity of character's and how sanity played a part was pretty brilliant.

I think the genre is probably too ambiguous to really have a perfect example of survival gameplay. DS did great, but their sanity system probably wouldn't work in Ark or Rust, which have their own survival merits and style and are generally well received except for the purely awful fact of having to play with the cancerous community.

Factorio is sort of 'survival' in a lot of ways and it forces you to move out and build out into increasingly dangerous areas in order to progress and get even basic resources. If you want to play it forever you can just ignore the rocket construction and keep going out further for resources. It's deep enough to virtually never end.

 

I played that game and it was really addicting. I think most of the over-developped games get worser than the first version.
Its really sad to see my favourite games being ripped off by developers trying to satistify their never-satistified player base.