Five Survival Games to Watch in 2025

The survival genre keeps growing, and 2025 brings a strong lineup of upcoming releases. From medieval sieges to alien deserts to renewable farming utopias, here are five titles worth putting on your radar this year, along with everything you need to know about each.

Renown

Renown drops you into a brutal feudal era where survival depends on steel, stone, and patience. Hunt for food, raise farms, build castles, and then defend them against rival players hoping to claim your land.

Customization runs deep. Helmets, weapons, banners, and sigils can all be tweaked so opposing knights know exactly who they are dealing with. When diplomacy fails, you can construct siege weaponry to flatten enemy walls, or hunker down behind your own fortifications and outlast the assault.

Anyone who enjoyed Chivalry, Mordhau, Mount and Blade, Dark and Darker, or Rust will likely feel at home here. Renown does not have a hard launch window yet, but it is set to enter early access in 2025 after a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Dune: Awakening

Dune: Awakening takes Frank Herbert's universe and turns it into an open-world MMO survival run. You wake up on Arrakis with two main enemies: the heat, and the sandworms that treat footsteps like a dinner bell.

Character creation goes beyond looks. Faction allegiance shapes your story, quests, and even unlockable abilities. You can build structures, craft vehicles, gather spice, and trade your way through the political fights that define life on Arrakis.

The PC release is locked in for May 20, 2025, with Xbox and PlayStation versions to follow. If you want a head start, the character creator and benchmark tool are already live on Steam.

Terminator Survivors

Terminator Survivors sets you down in the aftermath of Judgment Day, scavenging supplies while Skynet's machines hunt the few humans still breathing.

A solid base matters here, and so does your arsenal. Stockpile weapons, ammo, and anything that can dent a chassis. That said, picking fights with a T-800 is rarely the answer. Most terminators outgun you on principle, so escape and stealth tend to win more rounds than firepower. Other survivor factions complicate the math further, since every interaction can swing future encounters in your favor or against you.

The game slipped from a 2024 launch into a 2025 Steam early access window, with Xbox and PlayStation versions planned afterward.

Towers of Aghasba

Towers of Aghasba takes a more imaginative angle. As a member of the Shimu people, you return to your ancestral island to push back against the Withered, a corrupting force eating away at the local ecosystems.

The world itself is the draw. Strange creatures, layered cultures, and biomes that you can actively restore make Aghasba feel alive in a way most survival maps do not. Between gathering, settlement building, and trading with NPCs, you also spend plenty of time taming or hunting fantastical beasts you would not find anywhere else.

The game hit early access on Steam and PlayStation on November 19, 2024. The developers expect the early access phase to run between 12 and 18 months, so a full 1.0 launch in 2025 is plausible.

Solarpunk

Solarpunk is the calm entry on this list. Set in a future where humanity actually got renewable energy right, it leans into cozy futuristic farming instead of permadeath panic.

You build self-sustaining gardens, work alongside friendly NPCs, and explore a procedurally generated world. A personal airship lets you hop between floating islands as you uncover what the setting has to offer. Choices matter, and your actions reshape the surrounding environment over time.

Solarpunk is aiming for a 2025 Steam release, with no console plans announced yet. A demo is already available if you want to sample the vibe before launch.

Waiting for 2025?

While these titles work toward their launch dates, the existing survival catalog is enormous. HolyHosting offers dedicated server hosting for 70+ games, so if you and your group want a Rust grind, a Valheim run, or anything else from the current roster, the infrastructure is ready when you are.