Some of the most harrowing tales in human history are based around survival. Robinson Crusoe, Cast Away, and The Life of Pi are some standout examples. To game designers, survival is a fun mechanic to add into a game, or in the case of games like DayZ and The Long Dark it’s the entire point. These days survival mechanics move a game more towards reality, i.e. the need to eat, drink, etc while settling you in a hostile environment. Developers can sometimes shoehorn in mechanics where they don’t quite fit. After all, to someone with a hammer everything looks suspiciously like a nail.

So what makes for good survival mechanics in games? Why is survival fun in the first place?

Fallout: New Vegas is a game with surprisingly deep survival mechanics. It’s made with the same Bethesda engine as Fallout 3, but the game’s staff are all ex Interplay Entertainment (developers of the original 2 Fallout games) members. The game returned you to the west coast with a twisting tale of betrayal, greed, and complex faction interplay.

Fallout: New Vegas is hailed as a return to better parts of the Fallout series. I prefer Fallout 2, but F:NV sure beats the hell out of Fallout 4. — *Fallout: New Vegas* is hailed as a return to better parts of the *Fallout* series. I prefer *Fallout 2*, but *F:NV* sure beats the hell out of *Fallout 4.*

While you could eat and drink in Fallout 3, it offered little benefits beside a small bit of health and a hefty dose of radiation. In F:NV’s Hardcore Mode, eating and drinking are a must. As you skip meals and pass up water bottles, your stats slowly decrease. Go without for long enough and you die of starvation and/or dehydration. Stimpacks no longer heal a chunk of health instantly, but instead restore it over time. To heal crippled limbs, you must find a doctor, a doctor’s bag, or a few other options. Ammunition now has weight, instead of being magically weightless. These are not gigantic changes, but they fundamentally change how you play the game.

F:NV is one of the only games I've played that actually makes buying food a worthwhile option. — *F:NV* is one of the only games I've played that actually makes buying food a worthwhile option.

You now have to think about food/water weight when you’re moving across the Mojave. You can’t just pick up every weapon you find, but you have to think about what kind of ammo you’re carrying and if you can afford to spend more weight points on a new type. Moreover, the scarcity of resources plays into the game in a very thematic way, drawing you more into the world. You can gather resources to cook or create health items and you have to make choices about how to use everything to the best of your ability.

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R series is another series that features a few survival elements, though only in two out of three games. The survival elements are lighter in S.T.A.L.K.E.R than in FNV, but there are a few other mechanics that balance the whole package out, for the most part.

Nothing spells bleak quite like swamps and radiation. I'm still a little confused as to why anybody would go into the Zone, frankly.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R has no thirst mechanic and the hunger mechanic takes several in-game days to take effect. After a few days, your health lowers constantly and your stamina is severely reduced. S.T.A.L.K.E.R stumbles when it doesn’t make hunger a bigger threat. S.T.A.L.K.E.R could lower your carrying capacity, or affect your weapon handling when don’t eat. Maybe you’re so weak from hunger that you can’t hold your gun steady, or perhaps kickback is increased because you can’t brace the weapon properly? S.T.A.L.K.E.R introduces new combat and survival mechanics that shine, however. When you take damage in S.T.A.L.K.E.R you bleed and your health drops over time, with speed depending on the severity of the wound. If you don’t use a bandage on yourself, you can bleed out in the middle of a fight. In S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky and S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat radiation storms can occur and random, forcing you to seek shelter. If you’re caught outdoors, your health drops rapidly, and you’re assailed by disorienting effects.

Sprinting to find cover as the sky darkens around you is one of more harrowing parts of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series. These emissions are also a great example of gameworld and narrative working with gameplay. — Sprinting to find cover as the sky darkens around you is one of more harrowing parts of the *S.T.A.L.K.E.R* series. These emissions are also a great example of gameworld and narrative working with gameplay.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R games put you in one of the most inhospitable environments ever designed in games, but the survival aspect that comes with that setting is never really addressed, with respect to your character’s limitations. It might have been better to remove the food aspect of this game entirely, as it doesn’t add any depth to the game.

Why does any of this even matter? Isn’t survival kind of a terrible burden to have to face in real life? Well, survival mechanics offer a degree of realism that you usually don’t see in games. This is not to say that it makes games “realistic” or anything like that, but it does take some of our real world expectations and give them tangible gameplay implications. We get hungry, so does our character. We need to drink, and if we don’t in game, our character will suffer. It’s a fine line to tread between oppressing a player with annoying mechanics that stop the action every ten seconds and half-assign the mechanics so that they’re just in the way of gameplay, but when developers manage to get it right, it adds a lot to the game. I think you could also make a good case for the general direction towards more “realistic” mechanics in games. Swinging a sword in The Legend of Zelda is very different from swinging it in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, for instance. More complex mechanics feel like a natural progression and they challenge players a more.

Survival mechanics are a cool tool when used well. They can add a lot of depth to a game and make the player feel more involved in the world. Next time you’re playing a game with survival elements, think about how the game uses these elements to draw you in (or push you out if they’re bad) of the game world. How do the mechanics change how you play? What would make the mechanics better?