If there’s one genre where players are spoilt for choice at the moment, it’s survival games. There are just so many to pick from the minute, and one of the leads on Palworld believes the scene has truly come into its own after a few wilderness years where not many releases stood out.

“What a year for survival gaming,” John ‘Bucky’ Buckley, the head of publishing and communications at Pocketpair, says on Twitter. “Valheim, Dragonwilds, Enshrouded, Dune, Core Keeper, Terraria! What was once a genre that was plagued with 100 hit or miss games a year has really found its stride.”

The games he highlights make a strong argument. Valheim, the Viking-themed spin on resource-gathering and base-building, went 1.0 this year and continues to grow and flourish, while Dune: Awakening takes these ideas and applies them to the desert planet of Arrakis, if you’ve ever wanted to ride a sandworm. The latter just released on PS5 earlier this week, too.

RuneScape: Dragonwilds, then, is another exciting offshoot of the MMO staple. Enshrouded incorporates action RPG elements, for a bit more oomph if aimlessly roaming around isn’t entirely your thing, and then you have Core Keeper and Terraria, both more retro-style approaches.

At this point, Terraria simply refuses to die. There have been several ‘final updates’, but the community continues to expand and really, more power to all involved. Buckley gives a nod to Palworld, of course, because it’s now one of the dominant games in this side of the industry, and he mentions in the replies that he forgot about Windrose.

The pirate twist on survivalist antics came out in the first half of the year to a rousing reception. It’s actually published by Pocketpair, too. Gone are the days where it seemed like every survival game was riffing on either Rust or The Forest with little in the way of identifiable factors. Long may it continue.

Palworld lead thought one of Pocketpair’s most iconic Pals would “fade into the background” before it unexpectedly became the survival game’s “mascot.”