It was a good year for survival crafting sickos, and I'll be playing some of these well into 2026

I am the survival crafting menace of my friend group—the person in Discord always suggesting we go play in a new sandbox when we haven't even finished building castles in the last. It's like being friends with a sentient Steam Discover, but for some reason I can only recommend games where we're each given a Barbie and a pile of Legos.

This year didn't leave me with a lack of things to talk about, either. If anything, it was almost too busy for even the most enthusiastic of survival crafting sickos. I spent months bouncing between my sandstorm-battered home in Dune: Awakening, then bug-infested dwellings in Grounded 2, and cobbled-together cubicles of Abiotic Factor.

It's just, well, I really love the thrill of collecting giant piles of junk. Then there's nothing quite like the satisfaction of taking all that junk and turning it into things. And if you give me a monotonous little chore to do on the side? That's just icing on the cake. It's an unfortunate way to be when most games checking those boxes have no clear end, though it does explain why I've got a growing list of survival crafting playgrounds I'm taking with me into 2026.

Valheim - Call to Arms update

Valheim's Call to Arms update didn't make much of a first impression when distilled down to the barest of patch notes, so I almost passed on it. I'd just wrapped up another regular session with friends in March, and after so much viking survival earlier in the year, my group wasn't ready for a return trip when the update dropped in September. It was just on a whim, one rare, free weekend, that I did something I never do, and booted up the survival crafting game by myself.

And man, am I ever glad I did. Valheim's 2025 changes were bigger than I thought; filled with visual upgrades, revamped combat mechanics, and even a new equipable item type with the addition of trinkets. I was so giddy with discovery that I didn't even bother loading up my usual spread of Valheim cheats to shortcut through the more familiar sights. Instead, I went adventuring the way god intended: mostly naked, sailing on a boat of questionable integrity, and wielding nothing but a spear and handful of berries.

Pax Dei - 1.0

Pax Dei speaks to my old MMO-loving soul. It's a grindy, player-driven world with limited transportation options and a lot of brutal journeys hoofin' it across the map. I'm not even optimistic that there's enough demand to keep its dreamy vision of a massive, early 2000s-era RPG alive—none of us have the time or attention span for that—but despite feeling that every time I roam sparsely populated zones while rubberbanding gracefully after an injured boar, I keep logging back in.

The player-driven economy stuff doesn't function well either, and it feels a little half-baked for a 1.0 launch, but I swear, if you just give it a chance, Pax Dei is a sick set of Legos. Honestly, that's how it's kept me in this chokehold for hundreds of hours so far. Pax Dei is just really pretty, and I like the idea of building an MMO castle that others can visit. We're just a little light on guests, for now.

Misery - early access

Any vaguely Soviet-era iconography beckons to me in a siren song of depression, architectural decay, and classical arrangements that sound like someone shoved their speaker under a pillow. We could spend hours chatting about the why, or we could just acknowledge that I gobble up anything with an air of tragedy and ruin. I hope that makes me sound broody and mysterious to you, and maybe a little closer to understanding why I find a game called Misery such a delight.

It checks all my boxes, really. There's decaying buildings, kitschy wartime theming, and even the occasional muffled droning of a suffocating radio. It's got the atmosphere down with a weird, phantasmal twist; plus I just like playing house. The building component feels like a less sophisticated Abiotic Factor, but it's still in early access, and I've already had a blast with what's there. With some time and polish, I can see Misery becoming one of my usual survival crafting haunts in 2026.

Rust - Jungle and blueprint updates

I've had pretty mixed feelings about the Rust blueprint update, but like most things in the world's biggest playground for survival game freaks, it just takes some getting used to. I'm not ready to say I'm at peace with some of Rust's biggest 2025 changes, but I've been back at it for a few months now, and earlier additions from the year still have a hold on me, like the new jungle biome.

While recent changes benefit large clans, Rust's rainforest biome offers a sanctuary for solo survivors with thick foliage to camouflage bases in and hostile, predatory wild cats. On more than one occasion, I've bled to death while an angry Tiger dragged me through the jungle by the neck, but you know what? So have my enemies. My base is hard to see through all the greenery, and so is the local man-eating wildlife. I don't roll with a group to protect me, but sometimes I'll hear a roar outside my door followed by a series of frantic shots, and I just know.

Enshrouded - Wake of the Water update

Enshrouded remains in early access going into 2026, but it's still one of my favorites in the genre. Building intricately detailed houses with block-by-block granularity keeps me coming back even when there's not an update in sight. Its construction options are already plentiful with all manner of funky shapes, sizes, and materials to play with, and it only gets better when you realize 2025's last update added the only noticeably absent tool from the box—water.

That's right, folks. After surviving strangely dry (but always lush) landscapes for over a year, we can finally get wet in Enshrouded. It's not just a bunch of pre-determined lakes and static, sunken ruins, either. The Wake of the Water update lets you carve out your own canals, ponds, or even build underwater bases. I haven't tried that last bit yet myself, but I've seen the community making some awfully sophisticated structures, and I'm ready to drown trying.

Abiotic Factor - 1.0

Oh hey, our Best Co-op Game of 2025 award just happens to go to the game I'm willing to call my favorite survival crafting game, period. No need to attach a conditional year here, Abiotic Factor is an all-timer, and it's remained firmly at the top of my list since its early access debut last year. You know I'm hooked when I've run out of stuff to do, but then I boot the game up anyway to play it as a Half-Life-themed cable management sim.

Seriously—it's such a loving tribute to Black Mesa, Gordon Freeman, and the G-Man that I'm convinced Abiotic Factor developer Deep Field Games cares more about Half-Life than Valve does. That's a lot of its initial appeal, but even if you aren't familiar with its classic inspirations, exploring the GATE research facility as a negligent, bumbling scientist who occasionally shits themselves is a real delight.