The Best Crafting Games Where You Must Craft To Survive
One of the more fun things to do in video games is to craft. Sometimes it doesn’t even feel like a proper video game if it doesn’t have some kind of crafting.
Whether it’s gathering all the materials you need and crafting them on a workbench, or finding ingredients for recipes for potions and foods, crafting has become important in most video games.
Here are the 15 best crafting games for PC.
15. Kenshi
Kenshi Gameplay
Kenshi is a free-roaming squad-based RPG that focuses on open-ended sandbox gameplay, rather than the typical linear story. Gameplay is completely free-roaming and open, which gives you the freedom to basically do whatever you want, as long as you survive the cannibals, bandits, and wild beasts.
To craft, you must have researched technology to be able to build all crafting stations, and each of these stations allow you to craft various things. You can craft many things in this game, such as alcohol that you can smuggle in order to get money. You can also craft your own robot limbs, you know, if you lose an arm or a leg, as well as weapons and armor. Kenshi requires you to craft various things and use materials to upgrade buildings and weapons in order to protect yourself from the hostile environment, as well as items that can be sold for money.
Player with a Robot Arm in Kenshi
You can craft a lot of things in Kenshi, including buildings themselves
14. Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley Crafting Gameplay
Stardew Valley is an open-ended country-life farming simulator game, set in a small valley where you live on your own farm. Your farm is rundown, and it is up to you to rebuild it back into the farm it is supposed to be.
The crafting in Stardew Valley is simple enough, and keeps you busy gathering materials. There’s the crafting menu with the items you can craft, and hovering over whatever item you would like to make tells you what you need to craft it. You can craft items such as a sprinkler, which, if you’ve ever played farming games, comes in handy when you have fields full of crops. You can craft a keg to make beverages to eat to recover stamina or to sell for money. The crafting in Stardew Valley is mainly for the purpose to make farming easier on the farmer and to help the farmer along in rebuilding their farm.
Crafting Menu and Materials in Stardew Valley
Crafting in Stardew Valley requires the right materials, but they're pretty easy to get
13. Green Hell
Green Hell Gameplay
Green Hell is an Open-World Survival Simulator set in the Amazon rainforest; literally sounds like a green hell. You are in the jungle alone, without any food or equipment, and must survive to find a way out. You have nothing and must collect materials to build shelters, make tools, and craft weapons to fend off the constant threat of the jungle.
Crafting in Green Hell is a feature where new items can be crafted by combining materials and the crafting menu is easily at your disposal in your inventory. Since this is a survival game, almost all of the items you craft will aid in your survival: blades, bows and arrows, axes, hand tools, medicines, and shelters.
Crafting a Blade in Green Hell
Green Hell requires you to hunt to get materials to build certain objects
12. Conan Exiles
Crafting & Hunting Gameplay Conan Exiles
If you haven’t noticed by now, most crafting games are an open-world survival type of game. Conan Exiles is no different. This open-world survival game is set in the lands of Conan the Barbarian. In this game, you must survive in a brutal world by building your kingdom and over-powering your enemies in cold-blooded combat and warfare.
Crafting in Conan Exiles requires you to level up by killing enemies, gathering materials, and exploring. With leveling up, you earn Knowledge Points that you spend to unlock crafting recipes. You start out with the Survivalist and Weaver Knowledges, which gives you basic recipes for creating simple things such as torches and clothes. You have to craft workbenches in order to make weapons or armor, however.
By gathering materials, you can craft weapons and tools, and can craft anything from a small home to entire cities piece by piece. The idea behind the crafting is to defend yourself against enemies, while also being able to craft weapons to take them down. Being able to build cities and homes allows you to build up your kingdom and army.
Crafting Menu in Conan Exiles
You can build your own kingdom in Conan Exiles
11. Don’t Starve Together
Don't Starve Together Gameplay
This stand-alone multiplayer game is an expansion of the wilderness survival game, Don’t Starve. This game takes place in a strange and unexplored world that is filled with dangerous creatures and surprises. You must gather resources in order to craft items and structures to help you survive in this world. You can play with your friends in a private game or play with strangers online. Just whatever you do, don’t starve.
You must, like any other crafting game, have the sufficient materials in your inventory to craft any item, and you have to unlock item recipes as well. You can craft items and structures, based on what you need, that aid in your survival in the game. You’ll need a source of light, and Don’t Starve Together allows you to craft a pumpkin lantern, that looks just like a jack-o-lantern (which is cool in and of itself). You can craft unique backpacks, structures, and magic items that make the game that much more fun.
Don't Starve Together Crafting Menu
Is it really a survival game without a base camp? Build your own in Don't Starve Together
10. One Hour One Life
One Hour One Life Gameplay
This unique game is another multiplayer game. It’s a game of parenting and civilization building, where you live an entire life in one hour. You’ll have babies of your own in the form of other players, so if you want to keep playing you better be cranking those babies out. While you can only do so much in one lifetime, the tech tree in the game will take a lot of your family’s generation to explore.
Crafting in One Hour One Life lets players produce tools, food, and clothing out of gathered materials. Most of the crafting is done by picking up one object and then clicking on another. The things players craft will help the villagers and player survive, as well as allow you to build a village. Unlike the other games so far, some objects in this game have a limited life span; it seems this game is all about life and death.
One Hour One Life, Crafting
You'll need to craft a house for your family to live in...for a total of one hour
9. This War of Mine
This War of Mine Gameplay
This survival game is played as a group of civilians rather than just one soldier. You are trying to survive in a city that has been besieged, where you struggle with the lack of food and medicine while trying to avoid the dangerous snipers and scavengers. You can choose to try and protect everyone in your hideout or sacrifice some of them in order to ensure your survival. The main goal here, is, well, to survive.
Like most crafting games, you start out with the basic building workshop. With this workshop, you can create other work stations that make other items important to your survival. In this game, you can actually upgrade the workshops themselves which makes crafting easier. Crafting in this game is mostly beneficial to your hideout, where you craft household items. You also have to craft consumables, which is important to your survival as well.
This War of Mine, Crafting Menu
You must build up your shelter to survive
8. The Forest
The Forest Gameplay
The Forest is not only a survival game, but also borders on the line of a horror game. What’s more fun than trying to survive while also getting the crap scared out of you? You’re the only survivor of a plane crash, and you’re alone in a forest—well, alone besides the clan of cannibalistic mutants. You must survive not only the nature of the forest, but these terrifying people as well.
Crafting is like many other of these crafting games; it’s a feature where you can make items by combining certain crafting materials. In The Forest crafting items is pretty simple: you just need the right materials and to click each individual item for it to be crafted. You can craft weapons, bombs, clothing, storage containers, and tools. You’ll need to craft weapons and stronger clothing to help you survive against the threats that lurk in The Forest.
The Forest, Crafting Menu
You can build houses and get creative and even build one across a sinkhole
7. Rust
Rust Gameplay
You may have guessed it: the aim of this crafting game is to survive. This is a multiplayer game, wherein other players are also trying to survive, and unfortunately, they can actually kill you and take your stuff (so, uh, don’t die). The game is centered around a hostile environment, in which all you have to do is survive by gathering resources and crafting the necessities (easy, right?)
Like most survival games, you start out with the basic crafting items that are available in the crafting menu. You will need to explore and collect blueprint fragments in order to be able to craft more items. You can craft anything from weapons to construction pieces, to household items and clothing. You will also need to craft food and medicine to be able to survive in the wilderness.
Rust Crafting Menu
If your heart so desires, you can build a castle
6. ARK: Survival Evolved
ARK: Survival Evolved Gameplay
ARK: Survival Evolved is one of the more fun survival crafting games. You wake up naked (no, this isn’t why ARK is more fun) and stranded on a mysterious island called ARK, and you have literally nothing on you to survive. You must hunt, gather resources, grow food, craft items—you name it, you got to do it to survive. The reason this game is more fun to play is due to the fact you can kill or tame dinosaurs and other creatures that roam the land.
Along the same lines as Conan Exiles, upon leveling up you earn points that unlock items you can craft. A lot of the crafting can be done from your inventory, and all you need are the required materials. You can craft bigger items from crafting stations, which you have to craft before you can even use them. Much like any other crafting survival game, you need to craft food, clothing weapons, and shelter to survive.
ARK: Survival Evolved Crafting Menu
If you've had your fair share of crafting, take a break and go tame some dinosaurs
5. 7 Days to Die
7 Days to Die Crafting Gameplay
7 Days to Die is set in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by the undead. This is an open-world game that is a combination of survival horror as well as role-playing. You must craft, combat, loot, and mine to survive in this huge world.
You must craft and repair weapons, clothes, armor, vehicles, and tools in this game as well as build fortresses from ruins from the ground up. Crafting in 7 Days to Die is about the process of making an item from its constituent parts, that can be found from containers, looted from dead enemies, grown, or made from other items. You have to use the crafting menu to craft these items. You can craft ammo, building materials, food, furniture, gear, weapons, etc., things all needed to protect you from the undead.
7 Days to Die Crafting Menu
Is this The Sims or 7 Days to Die?
4. Project Zomboid
Project Zomboid Gameplay
As you could probably guess, this game is an open-ended zombie-infested sandbox game. The game takes place in the towns of Muldraugh and West Point, and players must build defenses and do all they can in order to survive the horde of zombies.
Crafting is pretty simple in this game: any crafting recipe that an item may be used in will show up in your right-click menu, and if an item can be used in multiple recipes, all those will be on display as well. Obviously, you will need the right materials to craft any recipe. In this game you can craft carpentry items, such as doors and stairs, that can be placed throughout the world. You can’t survive in a survival game without being able to craft food and drinks, so it’s no surprise that you have to craft those in Project Zomboid, along with weapons to be able to make it through.
Project Zomboid Crafting Menu
Maybe they're hungry?
3. Minecraft
Minecraft Gameplay
The mother of all crafting games may just be Minecraft. Minecraft is a sandbox game that allows players to build with a variety of blocks. Players have the freedom to place blocks wherever they would like to make whatever they would like, and the crafting in Minecraft is simple enough. To craft an item, move the ingredients from your inventory into the crafting grid and place them in the order that represents the item that you want to create. Crafting in Minecraft helps the players build and defend themselves from the creatures that lurk in the world. Or, you know, let’s them build anything their hearts desire.
Minecraft Building Menu
If you get lonely, build a village
2. SCUM
SCUM Gameplay
This game kind of gives of a Hunger Games vibe. You are in a TV series called SCUM, in which you are taken to an island of forests, rolling fields, and rugged terrains called SCUM Island (naturally). You are amongst other people who are out to kill you to win the battle. Your aim is to survive and win.
Crafting is easily accessible in SCUM, just by accessing your characters menu. The right-hand side of the screen is the crafting list and contains the crafting recipes you have, while the left side of the screen is the crafting section, showing the items that you need to make the recipe. You do need to get blueprints to build stationary items, such as a shelter or storage containers.
SCUM Crafting Menu
You probably don't have time to stop and see the flowers, but do it anyway
1. The Long Dark
The Long Dark Gameplay
The Long Dark is an impressive and thoughtful survival game that combines exploration with challenges. This game takes place in a massive frozen wilderness in the aftermath of a geomagnetic disaster. You must defy nature and survive as long as you can in the cold wilderness.
You can craft weapons, clothing, and other gear to help you survive in the wilderness. All the crafting is done at workbenches, and these can be found in various buildings in the game. You can craft bow and arrows, snares, and knives that can be used to hunt deer or defend yourself from wolves and bears. You will also need to craft clothing to shield yourself from the harsh weather if you want to stand a chance at all.
The Long Dark Crafting Menu
It may be hard to do, but killing Thumper may be the only way you'll survive
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