9 Games to Play if You Love Hytale

The thing about playing certain genres of games is that they tend to spark a craving for more of the same. For example, if you’ve been playing Hytale at all, it was probably because you picked up the craving from playing similar games involving survival, crafting, base-building, and combat, voxel worlds optional. Even if you’ve been enjoying Hytale, the game is still in a very early state at the time of writing, so you might run out of stuff to do sooner rather than later.

Luckily, if you’ve picked up the survival-crafting game itch from Hytale, you’re not spoiling for choice when it comes to other games in the same genre. There’s a reason that survival games have become one of the power-player genres in the modern game industry, especially for online stuff: they’re deep, engrossing, and extremely adaptable to player goals and desires. If you’ve caught the bug from Hytale, but need something else to play while its development continues, we’ve got other options falling out of our ears.

9 Terraria

Life in 2D

While survival-crafting in 3D like Hytale has become the style of the time, it’s hardly the only way to present that genre of game. A world doesn’t need to be in full 3D for it to be immersive, customizable, and maybe a teensy bit dangerous, all adjectives one could conceivably apply to Terraria.

Terraria is a 2D survival-crafting game whose sideways perspective gives it a little bit of action-platformer zest compared to its contemporaries. Using your mouse, you can aim in eight directions around yourself, allowing you to not just harvest and build materials all around yourself, but also swing and aim your weapons at just about anything that looks at you funny. This is good, because the game definitely has a bit of twin-stick shooter energy to it, not unlike Noita or Neon Abyss.

Of course, the action’s not the sole draw. With sufficient harvesting and building, you can create elaborate buildings and constructs with a comparable degree of complexity to 3D games. Just remember to put some stairs and scaffolding up so you don’t accidentally fall to your death when jumping directly down.

8 Starbound

Like Terraria, but in Space

Terraria is far from the only 2D survival-crafting game on the block. Both that game and Hytale have exceptionally large worlds to explore, but maybe you’re an ambitious sort who can’t be content with a single world to conquer. Well, Alexander the Great, if you’re still hungry for more worlds to explore and bend to your will, then buckle into a spaceship and go Starbound.

Starbound has a very similar vibe to Terraria, being a 2D survival-crafting game in which you need to harvest natural resources and engage in the occasional firefight. The difference is its overt sci-fi setting; the premise of the game is that your spaceship has failed above an alien world, and you need to beam down and scavenge parts and resources to get it up and running again. The direction your adventure ultimately goes from there, though, is largely up to you.

You could pursue the game’s overarching story and attempt to save the cosmos from the evil forces that damaged your ship in the first place, or you could pick one or two worlds to settle down on and colonize. Any route will likely involve a lot of travel, building, combat, and automation, but whatever purposes all of that will serve? Well, that all depends on what you’re looking to get out of life.

7 Core Keeper

There’s Gold in Them Caves

Hytale’s got plenty of monster and ore-filled caves to explore, though considering how dark and dank they are, nobody but the most dedicated explorer would feel particularly inclined to actually live in one of them. If you fancy yourself a cave-dweller, though, don’t let me judge you, but you might be a little more at home in the vast caverns of Core Keeper.

Core Keeper is a procedurally-generated crafting sandbox in which you and up to seven buddies stake your claim amidst a massive interconnected network of caves and caverns, each of which contain their own unique biomes, flora, and fauna. There’s the usual resource harvesting, like wood and stone, but with the right artifacts and a bit of knowhow, you can swiftly move up to advanced machinery like automated mining rigs and powerful weapons for clearing out the larger beasties.

Core Keeper is designed primarily as a social experience, with drop-in online co-op and recurring seasonal events. Even if you’re not online yourself, your friends can keep the gears turning in your absence.

6 Dragon Quest Builders 2

Blocks Meet Classic JRPGs

Hytale isn’t shy about its fantasy influences, what with its swords and sorceries and giant trolls and dragons. There are certainly plenty of survival and/or crafting games that also dwell in that particular realm, but one game that goes outright old-school with its aesthetic is Dragon Quest Builders 2.

A spin-off from the Dragon Quest series of JRPGs, Dragon Quest Builders 2 injects a little more of that distinctive JRPG flavor into the usual “build stuff with blocks” format. It’s got an entire story and overarching narrative with named, voiced NPCs, as well as questlines to pursue as you build up your local village and shore up its defenses against the occasional monster attack.

Building up villages is the focal point of the game, both restoring their physical buildings and infrastructure and helping to network them all together across the islands. If you find some survival-crafting games to be a little too meandering, Dragon Quest Builders 2 is generally a much more goal-oriented experience.

5 Valheim

Take a Vacation to the Tenth World

In Norse mythology, there are nine realms connected to the world tree Yggdrasil. If, as a Norseman, you were to end up in a tenth realm that nobody has ever heard of, that’s a pretty immediately clear sign that someone has messed up. But hey, if you like swinging your sword around in Hytale, you’ll certainly like it in Valheim.

Valheim is a Norse-themed survival-crafting game where you, as a viking in the mysterious titular realm, must stake your claim on the land in order to survive its many mundane and mythological hazards. Scavenging resources from both the fertile wilds and the creatures that inhibit them will allow you to build everything an enterprising Norseman needs, from a forge to smelt weapons to farmlands to grow your daily wheat.

Valheim actually has a very similar crafting system to Hytale; rather than having to arrange materials in particular patterns or configurations, you make anything you want from your menu, though you need to do enough crafting to progress your capabilities and unlock more advanced and elaborate constructs. You have to put the legwork in if you want to really tame these lands as your own.

4 Raft

Hey-O, Chicken on a Raft

Rife with critters and monsters as it is, I wouldn’t call Hytale’s overworld “hospitable” per se, but it’s nothing you can’t whip into shape with a sword and pickaxe. If you want a survival game in a world that is decisively against you almost constantly, then I hope you’ve got your sea legs, because it’s time to set out on the salty waves of Raft.

Raft is a survival-crafting game in which, as the title implies, you are on a raft. You’re stuck in the middle of a massive ocean with nothing to your name but a plastic hook and a rope for reeling stuff in, so you’d better get to reeling. By salvaging assorted debris from the ocean, you can build your raft up into something halfway habitable, crafting resources and utilities like small farms and fishing spots. Once you’ve got a proper foothold, you can begin exploring the surrounding sea, stumbling upon the rare island or diving below the waves into the reefs.

Compared to Hytale, Raft has much less emphasis on combat, though you will need to defend your floating home semi-regularly from marauding, junk-hungry sharks or the occasional island-dwelling bear.

3 Rust

Hope You’ve Had a Tetanus Shot

Hytale’s fantasy aesthetic is generally very bright and upbeat. Even when there’s a monster bearing down on you, it’s still very lively and fantastical. Maybe you don’t like the idea of your survival games being happy and fantastical, though. Maybe you’d prefer everything to be gritty and unpleasant. Hey, don’t let me tell you how to live your life. Enjoy all the grit you want in Rust.

Rust is an open-world survival-crafting game, and boy howdy, is the word “survive” in giant, concrete letters. You’re in the midst of a densely-forested island, and you’re not getting off it any time soon. All you can do is pick up a rock and go full caveman, hunting down critters to feed yourself and gradually working your way up to stone axes and bows.

Playing Rust is almost like speedrunning human evolution. Everything may start with rocks and ramshackle shelters, but as you harvest more resources and ingrain yourself on the island, you’ll gradually creep up the echelons of society and technology, finding horses to ride, then building carts, and finally full cars, not to mention firearms to protect everything you’ve amassed.

2 7 Days to Die

Spend Your Afternoon Zombie-Proofing

After you’ve built a base for yourself in Hytale, you could probably leave it for a few days on end, relatively secure in the assumption that nobody is going to try to break it or break into it. What if you weren’t the only one trying to survive and thrive, though? As a certain man once said, as long as there’s two people left on Earth, someone’s going to want someone dead, and that’s kind of what playing 7 Days to Die is like.

7 Days to Die is one of the more overtly hostile survival-crafting games out there. Not only do you need to survive in the middle of nowhere, but you’re being actively threatened on all sides, both by the ravenous hordes of mutant undead and other desperate survivors looking to raid your base and steal your supplies. Not only do you need to build up a base and amass equipment for yourself, you also need to think strategically, installing traps and shoring up defenses to ensure nobody can take your stuff while you’re away.

7 Days to Die also has a distinctive character-progression element, with skill and perk trees that allow you to build up your survivor based on your personal playstyle. Surviving isn’t just about who has the biggest stick, it’s about who’s best at swinging it.

1 Minecraft

To Nobody’s Particular Surprise

Alright, let’s stop beating around the bush and get to the obvious answer: yes, if you like Hytale, there’s a nonzero chance you’ll like Minecraft, and in fact, you’ve probably already played Minecraft. You wouldn’t be alone; the devs of Hytale were originally a team of Minecraft modders and mappers who wanted to make their own thing, which is also why they went to the trouble of rescuing the game after Riot canned it.

If you somehow played Hytale before Minecraft, you are a veritable unicorn. Minecraft is, of course, the definitive open-world survival-crafting voxel game. You start with absolutely nothing, and gradually block and chop your way toward building a home, gathering resources, and setting up elaborate systems and mechanisms, either for its own sake or to fuel your voyages into more dangerous realms.

Compared to Hytale, Minecraft does have a much larger emphasis on the crafting part of “survival-crafting.” There is combat, but it’s more for self-defense or material harvesting than actually getting into pitched battles with things. Though, if you’re feeling militaristic, there are plenty of warmaking contraptions you could build like a TNT launcher. It just takes a little creativity and a lot of free time.