What makes a survival game? Over the years, the genre has become increasingly difficult to quantify. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil is a survival horror. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Minecraft is a survival crafter. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Subnautica is a sea-faring survival game about exploration. No matter where we look, studios are taking the genre and interpreting it in new ways. So, as TheGamer celebrates Survival Week, we’re aiming to leave no stone unturned. You heard me - 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Animal Crossing is a survival game.

Nintendo’s lifesim might not ask you to stay hydrated or ensure you’re getting enough sleep, but it presents a sense of routine influenced by reality that few in the medium can match. It benefits the player to log in every day to chat with residents, pop to the shops, or pay off their loan - slowly but surely establishing their livelihood on the fictional island they washed ashore on. You can only l💙eave to visit friends or catch bugs, meaning this🥀 isle will forever be your purgatory. If you think about it that way, it’s not dissimilar to The Forest.

Animal Crossing has seen us try and survive in a city, town, island, and sprawling real estate empires where our only goal is 🍸to give every single resident unlimited rizz.

Except for islanders ♕you visit within their own distinct universes, you are the only surviving human in the Animal Crossing mythos. The only living things capable of talking to you are humanoid animals who take up refuge alongside you. It’s extra messed up that in a world where talking birds and other animals exist, their silent counterparts can be glimpsed existing in nature. It’s a twisted state of affairs, and one the player must navigate with silent determination if they don’t want to anger the overweight tanuki offering them shelter. You’re pestered to keep the town and/or island alive, contributing to community projects and shops so there arises an opportunity to no longer live in your own squalor. Or a tent with a sleeping bag and lamp, which you won’t move out of unless you have the initiative to do so.

Animal Crossing is also reminiscent of survival because it embraces the mundane routines we fall into as human beings. We get up, walk around town keeping our social batteries all charged, and dig up fossils to donate to the museum. If you fail to stay on top of these things and don’t turn the game on for a handful of weeks or months, signs will start to surface as symbols of your negꦯlect. Weeds will appear, wildlife may run rampant, and old friends may move a🌃way or miss you terribly. Coming back, there is a real feeling of guilt to see how your town has changed without someone to watch over it.

Aside from fainting af🦩ter a sudden spider bite, there is no failure state in Animal Crossing. No way to die and be forced to reload your game or restart a run. To many, it is a game made for relaxation, to create a paradise in your own image where all the residents are picked purely because they look cute and gel with your personality. But you are doing all this to justify your own existence, and to survive in a virtual experience that will cease to exist if you walk awa𒁃y and neglect it. Every move you make in this game is for your own well-being, to benefit the person your avatar is becoming and the world you wish to build. It is done day by day, a slow process of figuring out how to best persist on your island without a need to walk away. Because when you do, it’s only a matter of time until it’s all for nothing.

Survival games can be anything, and their definition is often influenced by how we perceive the concept of survival and want to see it realised in video game form. Logging in each day and establishing a sense of routine that will become rewardi𝔉ng is a form of survival💯, and one that Animal Crossing: New Horizons and all the games before it manage beautifully.

Survival Week at TheGamer is brought to you by Nightingale -

Survival Week tag page header
Dates
Februar♛y 12-18, 2024
Genre
♔ Survival, Survival Horror
Franchise
Minecraft
Games
Nightingale🗹, Enshrouded, Palworld, DayZ, Valheim, ARK: Survival Evolved, Frostpunk, Pacific Drive, STALK🌱ER 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Project Zomboid

Welcome to the home of TheGamer's Survival Week, a celebration of all things, well, survival. Here you'll find features, interviews, and more dedicated to this popular genre, brought to you by Inflexion Games' upcoming open-world survival crafter, Nightingale.