The Forest touts itself as a single-player survival game, but really it only has survival elements. This rings true even in current single-player games. That being said, the fun didn’t come from sitting around a campfire simply existing instead, it came from the player-vs.-player.
I sunk hundreds of hours into DayZ fighting off other players trying to steal my can of beans. I’m not saying that formula is inherently bad on the contrary, I have had some great experiences playing games like these. Somewhere in between all of that, the player needs to consume food and water. After some time, the player can start raiding enemy bases for loot, and said loot is then used to build an even better base. Eventually, if the player survives the massive hordes of other players seeking gear and loot, they can build better weapons and bases. Nowadays, especially on Steam, games with the tag “survival” tend to follow a simple formula : put the player in a massive map where they have to beat trees to make bases and crude tools.
Food, water, and shelter were your top priorities, and they would be the pillars of gameplay.
These types of games used to be about - you guessed it - survival. Not horror-survival or any other subcategory of survival, but rather a true survival game. Over the years, there seems to have been a shift in what a survival game is.
