Rhitankar Nath
DayZ first started out as a mod that took the world by storm due to its intense survival horror mechanics and combat system. It kind of gathered a cult reputation for itself in the early months and quickly grew viral among the gaming community. The developers took notice and decided to turn the mod into a standalone game. It was released in the year 2018 to massive success and fans of the game praised it for staying true to its successor. Today, we take a look at some of the other games that play similar to DayZ and requires you to survive in a hostile environment, so if you are a fan of such titles, then you could give these games a try. Here’s the list of video games similar to DayZ that are our recommendations. You can play these games like DayZ on PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC, iPhone, Android, mac or even online.
12. State of Decay (2013)
State of Decay is a stealth-based action adventure survival horror video game developed by Undead labs and published by Microsoft Studios back in the year 2013. The main premise of the game is to survive by recruiting people to your town and managing resources while maintaining alliances with other characters in the game. You can either follow the actual storyline of the game or choose to take care of certain activities that ensure the survival of your people. At different points in the game, you will have the option to take in survivors from the outside world and there are two bars present here – one represents the relationship meter with the people that show whether you can recruit them and another one shows whether you can control them. In addition, the game also provides you with the choice to build a base anywhere on the map and then manage the resources of the town in order to expand and survive.
11. H1Z1 (2018)
There are various aspects to the gameplay of DayZ as discussed in the introduction of this article and this one’s for those people who prefer the survival aspect of the game. H1Z1 is a battle royale where you are able to compete against other players online in an open map similar to PUBG. There are various modes of survival after you parachute into the map but looting is extremely important to any method you choose for the rest of the game. You need to scramble for loot in the early stages of the game as there are various areas in the map that provide the player with better loot and these are frequented by veterans forcing players to confront each other.
Once you have the basic loot stacked, you can actively hunt for other players to kill and loot them or just hide out in the map while you let others kill each other. The map gets progressively shorter as there is a cloud of poisonous gas closing in and it damages the players if they happen to get stuck in the area. The game is completely free to play and was developed NantG and published by Daybreak Game Company in the year 2018 for Windows PC and PS4 devices with a port for Xbox One currently in development.
10. Dead Frontier (2008)
Dead Frontier is a free to play browser based co-op survival horror video game published by Creaky Corpse in the year 2008. The game requires the player to sign up and create a free account through which they are able to interact with other players in the game and access the other features provided by the developers. This is followed by an extensive character creation screen where you are required to create your character from scratch. You are dropped in to Fairview City, a city infested and overflowing with zombies where you are required to cooperate with other players online and fight against these monsters. You need to pick up a profession for your character which will enable you to earn resources in order to buy better weapons and armor for your character which are referred to as ‘drugs’ in game so indulge with care. This is a game you will love if you loved DayZ and it’s completely free to play on your browser, so go ahead and check out the game. You have nothing to lose!
9. Dead Rising 3 (2013)
Dead Rising 3 is the thirds main installment in the Dead Rising video game series developed by Capcom and published by Microsoft in conjunction with Capcom in the year 2013 for the Xbox One and Microsoft Windows systems. The game has an extensive campaign that is playable to two players in a co-op setting set in a wide open world that is said to be larger than the world of both Dead Rising 1 and 2 combined. The gameplay is not actually similar to that of DayZ but the setting is very similar to the game and fans of the DayZ universe will feel right at home in the Dead Rising universe. Most of the gameplay revolves around the player traversing through the open world searching for weapons and upgrades that will help them survive longer. It also uses the Kinect feature where zombies and their AI is made more aware to the state of the player and any loud noises made by the player will trigger a response from the zombies.
8. Dead Island (2011)
Dead Island is an open world survival horror video game developed by Techland and published by Deep Silver in the year 2011. The game drops you in a world infested by zombies and you must survive by crafting items and using them to further upgrade your weapons. However, you don’t have much to call weapons for the better half of the game as it emphasizes on close range combat, with you focusing on melee weapons. In addition, there is also a stamina bar that you need to maintain and each action you take in the game depletes the stamina bar.
You need to lay quiet for some time to regenerate your stamina and resume your activities. There is an XP-based leveling system where each activity provides you with a certain bit of XP and when you level up, you gain a bit of boost to your attributes and are given one skill point to spend. Weapons can be upgraded to increase their stats and most weapons can also be modded according to your needs. This is a game we highly recommend to fans of the DayZ franchise and to fans of survival horror games in general.
7. Scum (2011)
This is a personal recommendation to fans of the survival genre. Scum is a realistic survival game where you are required to craft items and use them to survive in a wide open world. You are a prisoner who has nothing but his clothes and an wide open world at your disposal. The game is extremely realistic and you are required to maintain a proper balanced diet that incorporates all the necessary vitamins and proteins which then maintain your body type. Depending on your diet, you may get fat or slim affecting your stamina and the gameplay overall, so make sure to scavenge and save food whenever you find it.
The looting system in the game too is extremely diversified allowing you to create and craft anything to your desire. It’s not all gritty realism though as there are some hilarious aspects to the gameplay due to these realistic settings. The game requires you to maintain your bowel movements as well and if you fail to discharge your wastes before a set limit, the character will start disposing them automatically, totally oblivious to the fact that you are being chased by a huge mech. It is one of the most realistic survival games that we have played recently and honestly, the depth of the gameplay options have managed to leave us quite ruffled up at start. Oh, and did we mention that the game contains zombies?
6. 7 Days to Die (2013)
Your world has been taken over by zombies and you have 7 days to make your last stand. That’s the entire gameplay premise of 7 Days to Die. You are the survivor of a nuclear war that has wiped out the better part of the humanity and has left most of the dead in a decaying parasitic zombie like state. You spawn in a randomly generated location in the map and then you need to survive from other players and zombies while scavenging for resources. Nutrition and hydration also need to be maintained by the player where they need to eat and drink at regular intervals. You can decide to play solo or group up with your friends in order to take a shot at survival but be aware that you will need all the more resources in a co-op environment. The game also allows you to build simple structures that will aid you in your survival because on the seventh day, a huge horde of zombies will be spawned that will attack the player. You are required to survive this wave of zombies and if you manage to do so, you win the game.
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5. Project Zomboid (2016)
Project Zomboid is an open world survival horror video game developed by The Indie Stone and published by the same company. The game is still in development with the latest build or patch called Build 34 released recently. There have been major setbacks in the development of the game with the two laptops containing the source code for the game being stolen; but the team has managed to keep on developing the game with regular updates releasing on steam till the May of 2016. Build 34 was regarded as stable and a more polished version of the patch is in development. The aim of the game is to survive as long as possible in a zombie infested quarantined land called Knox County. You need to scavenge and hunt for resources similar to any other survival game and fans of the DayZ universe will find a lot of common elements in the world design and the resulting environment.
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4. Don’t Starve (2013)
Don’t Starve is a survival horror video game that plays similar to all other survival horror games mentioned on this list but from a top down ‘god mode’ perspective. The aim of the game is to survive as long as possible in a world that’s teeming with zombies but you have a safe haven for yourself complete with a campfire. Now you must gather other resources in order to aid your survival and fight off these deadly beasts but don’t forget to take care of your sanity though. All these fighting against the zombies will strain your natural capacity for terror and push you towards your doom but fear not, at the end of the darkest nights shines the brightest of days and yours too shall come. Just make sure you don’t starve.
3. Rust (2013)
Rust is one of the more popular online survival games out there that enjoys a huge active playerbase. The PvP combat in this game is one of the best that we have come across in any such games and this is not because the game introduces new mechanics or that are extremely polished but because it is extremely fun. The main aim, similar to other survival games out there, is to survive for as long as possible by collecting and gathering resources and then crafting materials with them. Though zombies are meant to be the main threat to the player, the actual main threat in the game is the players themselves. It is extremely hard for a new player to get their resources going, but once they do, the game becomes extremely fun to play.
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2. Dying Light (2015)
We don’t want to spend much time talking about Dying Light as we have spoken about this game ample amount of times and have constantly recommended it to people who regularly visit our pages, so it goes without saying that it is one of our most favorite games. You are sent to a quarantine zone that is infested by zombies in order to investigate the area and this is where the story sets in. You are given a grappling hook which allows you to traverse tall buildings quickly while using parkour mechanics to evade and escape perilous situations. The game was released in the year 2015 to overwhelming positive reviews with critics praising the survival horror mechanics of the game.
1. The Forest (2014)
The Forest is a survival horror video game that really manages to challenge your conscience and it is this fact of the game that forces us to put this game at the top spot on various lists. It is not only a game that pitches the bad guy against the good guy but also manages to question the qualities of the good guy as opposed to the bad. You are left stranded in a dense forest after a plane crash and you wake up to find cannibals dragging off your son. From here on, the game plays like any other survival horror video game but at various instances, you will keep on asking whether the cannibals are aggressive for maintaining their rituals and practices or are you the bad guy having encroached upon their sacred land?
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