Imagine a hardcore survival game… but it’s peaceful? It sounds like a contradiction, but survival is about more than just bleeding, starving, fending off zombies or wild animals, and struggling to stay alive from dawn until dusk. Fighting for your life is a thrill, but that’s not the only thing to enjoy in survival games.
Survival is also about crafting, exploring, harvesting resources, and carving out a life in an untamed environment. Hunting and fishing, creating your tools and weapons, growing your own food supply, cooking your meals, and turning a shelter into a cozy home with a roaring fireplace is the ultimate goal of any survival game: it’s what makes all those difficult struggles worthwhile.
Survival games are also loaded with creative systems you should be able to enjoy even if you don’t like combat. So, why not turn that combat off and play in a more gentle world? Luckily, many of the best survival games let you do just that. Here are the some great hardcore survival games you can play in peaceful mode.
Vintage Story
There are a ton of options for tailoring Vintage Story so you can have exactly the experience you want, including disabling seasons (so you don’t have to deal with winter), increasing the amount of resource deposits that appear in the world, and adjusting the behavior of mobs to be less aggressive—so they won’t attack you unless you attack them first. Mods are also available to disable hostile mobs altogether, if you don’t want them in your world at all. I’ve only recently discovered this game myself, and yes, it does look a heck of a lot like Minecraft. But I’m already impressed by the complexity of Vintage Story’s survival systems and how it provides a much different experience than the more famous block voxel sandbox.
Project Zomboid
Let’s say you’re looking for some of the deepest and most complex survival systems in games, but man, you are so sick of zombies. No problem! In sandbox mode, the notoriously brutal Project Zomboid lets you simply switch zombies off if you want to. Play it your way, in other words, though be warned: that doesn’t mean your life will be a picnic because there are still plenty of injuries to sustain and illnesses to catch. If you really want to experience crafting, building, foraging, farming, and exploring in this game without being mobbed by the undead, 7 Days to Die’s sandbox mode is a deeply engrossing survival experience.
Ark: Survival Evolved
Sounds weird for a punishing survival game filled with angry dinosaurs and murderous players, but for a long while Ark: Survival Evolved is how I’d relax and unwind at the end of the day. I wasn’t battling players or fighting dinos or restlessly working my way through the tech tree to unlock new gear and weapons: I just had a quiet little cottage next to a late filled with prehistoric beavers, and I’d cook, craft, feed my pets, and maybe take a careful little excursion into the world now and then. It helped that it was on a private server so I wasn’t hounded by other players, but you can get the same experience playing with friends only or in singleplayer.
Icarus
There’s a highly enjoyable crafting and building system in Icarus, and an outpost mode where you can disable predators by playing on easy difficulty. But honestly, if you stay in the starting biome in Open World mode, you can still experience a mostly safe environment, with the exception of an occasional bear or wolf (and even those can be kept at bay with a craftable creature deterrent placed near your base). You can live the quiet life while farming, raising animals, collecting rainwater, and working on your base. Sure, heavy storms roll in every now and then, and if you venture into caves to mine minerals you’re gonna find plenty of nasties. Plus, you know, the air is toxic and will kill you within minutes if you’re not careful. But it’s still a great game for building a cozy cabin and enjoying a (mostly) serene pioneer existence.
Sons of the Forest
Thoughtfully built into the horror survival game, you can activate Sons of the Forest’s peaceful mode in the difficulty settings. Once it’s on, mutants and cannibals simply won’t spawn in the world—though hostile animals will, meaning you occasionally might still have to fight while you’re out exploring. Since SotF’s progress is based on fighting bosses, you’ll also need to trigger boss fights if you want to get through the entire game, but if you just want to do some building, hunting, cooking, and hang out with Kelvin while not being hounded by disturbing cannibal tribes and monsters, Sons of the Forest’s peaceful mode is a genuinely great way to experience the game.
Raft
You’re not gonna have an easy time in the first few hours of Raft: you’re desperately trying to gather resources as they float by, stay fed and hydrated and healthy, and fend off that ruthless, endlessly hungry shark. But there’s a lovely peaceful mode you can activate in Raft, which means animals won’t attack you unless you attack them first. A gentle playthrough of Raft is a wonderful experience: just float through the sea, improve your raft at your own pace, take care of your needs, visit the little islands you pass at your leisure, and only get into fights if you really want to.
Valheim
Valheim has come a long way since its early access release in 2021: it’s added new biomes, more bosses, and most importantly, lots more options to let you find the precise balance and challenge you’re looking for. Apart from using Valheim cheats to enable creative mode, you can play on a setting called “Casual” which means monsters still roam the world but they won’t attack unless you attack them. Your home will never be raided, there are lots of extra resources in the world, and if you die you don’t lose any items. Just explore the world, build the base of your dreams, and only get into fights when you’re ready for them.