Steam’s PvE Survival Crafting Fest features discounts on games about exploration, gathering, surviving, crafting, and base building. Before the sale ends on September 7, check out our recommendations.
PVE Survival Crafting Fest 2026
Gather, Build, and Survive With These Games
The Steam PvE Survival Crafting Fest highlights games built around surviving hostile environments, thriving in them, and finding comfort in the process. The week-long sale ends on September 7 at 10:00 A.M. PT / 1:00 P.M. ET, but these games offer hundreds of hours of content to keep players occupied until the next round of discounts.
These are Game8’s recommendations from the festival, showcasing a healthy variety of the best survival crafting games on sale.
Rewarding Exploration
Palworld
| Original Price | Discounted Price |
|---|---|
| $29.99 | $20.99 (30% off) |
Palworld is an open-world survival crafting game that combines the standard genre tropes with monster collecting. Explore the Palpagos Islands, a large world filled with creatures called Pals that you can capture for combat, traversal, or assigned jobs back at base. Every Pal specializes in different tasks such as farming, and you’ll need better workers to keep up with the game’s resource-heavy demands.
That creature system is what gives Palworld the biggest reason to explore. Different parts of the Island are home to new species of Pals, including stronger variants, bosses, and rare creatures that can significantly improve your combat or progression. If you’re a player who’s tried the game in Early Access, it’s worth another shot as the full release adds tons of content and quality-of-life fixes.
Windrose
| Original Price | Discounted Price |
|---|---|
| $29.99 | $26.99 (10% off) |
Windrose is an open-world survival crafting game that takes the genre to the high seas during an alternate Age of Piracy. You explore an archipelago filled with islands, dungeons, quests, and hidden treasures, gathering resources to craft equipment, upgrade your character, and construct increasingly elaborate bases.
Exploration is the highlight of this game, as players continually discover exciting content in each new island. Additionally, since it’s a pirate game, players can also customize their ship for naval combat, complete with boarding actions, to swipe hard-earned treasure for their crew.
Once Human
| Original Price |
|---|
| Free to Play |
Once Human is a free-to-play open-world survival crafting game that mixes post-apocalyptic base-building and cosmic horror. Players explore the Stardust-contaminated wilderness of Nalcott, fighting off mutated humans, animals, plants, and alien bosses while searching for resources and blueprints. Deviations, or tameable anomalous creatures, can also help out with standard base-building tasks.
The game is an always-online MMO, similar to Fallout 76, so expect to see other players minding their own business. You can team up with friends or random passersby to tackle harder content like dungeons and world bosses. Alternatively, you can lean into the game’s competitive elements and join a PvP server, where Warbands fight over valuable resources and territory.
Finding Joy in Suffering
Project Zomboid
| Original Price | Discounted Price |
|---|---|
| $24.99 | $16.74 (33% off) |
Project Zomboid is an open-world zombie survival crafting game that tells the story of how players will inevitably die. Set in several towns across rural Kentucky, it’s a detailed survival sandbox that’s exhaustingly realistic, as players must avoid zombies while looting abandoned homes, training dozens of skills, and managing their character’s personal needs before it turns into an unmanageable disaster.
The game is remarkably old for a game that remains in Early Access, having launched on Steam back in November 2013. More than a decade later, it received one of its biggest updates with Build 42, bringing positively received features that pushed the game’s active players to a new all-time high. Project Zomboid’s steep learning curve and unforgiving nature are perfect for players who want more emphasis on the survival part of the genre.
Kenshi
| Original Price | Discounted Price |
|---|---|
| $29.99 | $11.99 (60% off) |
Kenshi is an open-world sandbox survival RPG where you begin as an almost helpless nobody and will most likely stay that way until you eventually learn how to survive one of the most hostile worlds in gaming. The game’s enormous 870-square-kilometer world doesn’t care about you at all, and will continue with its daily struggles with or without your intervention. There is no main quest pushing you forward, and you’re completely free to decide what life to build—whether that’s a trader, bounty hunter, rebel, or warlord, as long as you’re not a cannibal’s next meal.
While Kenshi leans more toward RPG and squad management, traditional survival crafting tropes play a huge part in progression. Once you decide to stop living the nomad life and bunker somewhere, constructing a fortified settlement requires tons of resources, technology, buildings, and maybe a trade route or two. This is one of those rare games that you can play for thousands of hours and still find something novel in each playthrough.
A Sci-Fi Twist
Abiotic Factor
| Original Price | Discounted Price |
|---|---|
| $34.99 | $27.99 (20% off) |
Abiotic Factor is a first-person survival crafting game that turns a massive underground research facility into your new home. You play as a scientist trapped inside the GATE facility after a catastrophic containment breach, which means you’ll contend with SCP-like anomalies and creatures, hostile security systems, and a covert paramilitary group that started the disaster in the first place.
Abiotic Factor changes the scenery for veteran survival crafters, as players will gather office supplies and dismantle scientific equipment to jury-rig bizarre tools, equipment, and technology. Additionally, the game is great for players who want a more linear progression and a stronger narrative, as you’ll slowly move from one locked facility to the next to uncover the conspiracy.
The Alters
| Original Price | Discounted Price |
|---|---|
| $34.99 | $17.49 (50% off) |
The Alters is a story-driven sci-fi survival game that asks you to survive on a distant planet against a lethal sun with a crew made entirely of alternate versions of yourself. Play as everyday man Jan Dolski, the lone survivor who creates "Alters" pulled from parallel timelines and shaped by diverging choices. Survival revolves around maintaining and expanding a mobile base while exploring the planet for metals, organics, and other resources before dangerous radiation and anomalies make the surface too risky.
Beyond managing resources and supplies, you’ll also have to manage crew morale and relationships, as it turns out, cramming the mobile base with dysfunctional clones doesn’t make for the smoothest company. This also ties into base building and assigning roles, turning the genre’s monotonous task into something more personal.
Subnautica
| Original Price | Discounted Price |
|---|---|
| $29.99 | $7.49 (75% off) |
Subnautica is an open-world underwater survival crafting game that strands you on an ocean planet, and everything you need to survive is beneath the surface. The game is almost entirely set underwater, with brief respites to craft in the Lifepod. Progress and exploration are closely tied together, as you’ll have to scavenge materials to make better equipment, allowing you to push through the alien planet’s more dangerous waters.
Subnautica is best known for its colossal wildlife and deep-sea creatures, using latent Thalassophobia and fear of the unknown to deliver scares that rival the scariest horror games. Even though the game keeps you constantly tense, it still compels you to move forward with its central mystery.
Grounded
| Original Price | Discounted Price |
|---|---|
| $39.99 | $19.99 (50% off) |
Grounded is an open-world survival crafting game that shrinks you down to the size of an ant and turns an ordinary suburban backyard into a dangerous wilderness. From this new perspective, grass becomes thick forests, puddles turn into lakes, and harmless insects such as ants and spiders become predators. While the gameplay follows the genre's familiar loop, it’s worth exploring the once-familiar setting.
The game also has a full story to follow and throws the player multiple worthwhile objectives to pursue. Additionally, the building system gives you plenty of freedom to construct anything from a small grass shelter to sprawling elevated bases powered by science.
