Top 17 best survival games for Android phones and tablets

Ark is a survival adventure game with city-building elements thrown in. You find yourself on an island full of large dinosaurs. You will need to build up a base, gather resources, tame dinosaurs and fight off baddies who roam the land. This Android survival game starts you off with nothing, which is quite harsh in the genre, forcing you to gather everything you need to survive. You are able to play with your friends, which can make it a bit easier to survive. The graphics in Ark are pretty high resolution, which can really make for a better atmosphere too.

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Don’t Starve: Pocket Edition is probably one of my personal favorite survival games. You are left, alone, in the wilderness in a mysterious world. You must explore, gather resources, build various tools to help you, and survive each night. As the night-time falls, the world becomes dark and you will start to go mad if you do not hang out in the light. There are many dangers, strange creatures, and even seasons to deal with! You can eventually find your way out of this world and back home if you Don’t Starve first.

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Playing as an intergalactic trucker who has been stranded on an alien planet, Crashlands is a really fun Android survival game where you need to build a base, deliver lost packages, fight baddies and save the entire world - if you can. There is just so much content in Crashlands - with over 500 different items to create, creatures to fight and tame, and resources collected. It’s all about hunting, collecting, building and crafting - and is just fun to master.

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Minecraft is a very popular title and it does fit under the popular survival games. If you haven’t heard of Minecraft, it’s a building and crafting, open-world game where you can travel around, explore biomes and collect various items to craft into more items. In survival mode, you have to eat food and watch out for dangerous mobs to survive. Nighttime is dangerous and you'll need to watch out. You can create portals to other worlds, to gather even more resources and build up your world. It’s a wildly fun title!

Minecraft also lets players express their creativity. I mean, you can take a look at these house designs and Minecraft castles that will absolutely blow your mind.

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The next title on the list is well-known by any avid gamer. Fallout Shelter is another famous survival game for mobile devices where you have to build and protect your vault. To develop your shelter successfully, you have to make your inhabitants happy and give them various items, such as weapons and clothes. Also, you have to train your dwellers and send them to explore the world. If you want to develop your vault in the most effective way, make sure to find a perfect job for each of your inhabitants.

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Terraria is very similar, in a lot of ways, to Minecraft. It's 2D, where you can collect items, fight strange monsters, mine more profound and deeper into the world, and craft things! There are a lot of biomes to explore, local and online multiplayer, and many different modes that can make this survival game far more challenging. The monsters are quite diverse and interesting, especially in their attacks, which is one of my favourite aspects of Terraria.

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We wouldn’t have popular survival games for Android without surviving after the apocalypse. There has been an infectious outbreak and the world is filled with zombies in Last Day on Earth: Survival. You need to keep yourself alive, along with helping other survivors. You can collect resources, gather needed requirements like food and water, and create weapons to kill off hordes of zombies. When the threat is zombies and your general needs, you will need to stay focused to survive. It has also made it to the list of best iOS survival games, which says a lot about it.

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Survival Island: EVO has you estranged on an island, out in the middle of nowhere. You will need to find food, craft very basic tools, build a shelter and try to survive this mysterious island. Exploring can reveal treasures, which can be useful for your long-term life there. However, there are also enemies to fight, needs to be met, and a lot of the island to explore.

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Vampire Survivors is another fantastic survival game for mobile devices. There are quite a few interesting levels where you have to survive for as long as you can. The gameplay is simple but, at the same time, extremely addictive. You can unlock a lot of characters in Vampire Survivors and try many different weapon evolutions. We have covered it with a lot of different guides for a reason, it's an awesome and at the same time, rather simple survivor!

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Taking place during the Soviet Union in the 80s, you need to survive after a nuclear power plant apocalypse. Day R Survival - Apocalypse has hunger and radiation, as well as dangerous mutant creatures all looking to kill you. There are tons of locations to explore, to find items, as well as lots of resources and crafting. It has a large mission and quest system, to keep you busy and focused when you are surviving.

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Labelled as a more hardcore Android survival game, Grim Soul is a very popular title in the genre. You will be surviving a dark land set somewhere in the medieval ages, full of enemies. You can build a fortress and then defend it, keeping you and any players you want to play with alive. There are lots of chat options that allow you to work with people around the globe, so you can take on this challenge with some friends.

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Survivor.io is another incredible roguelike where you have to survive for as long as possible. You have to pick the best weapon, choose the right skills and evolutions, and destroy crowds of enemies. There are more than 1,000 different opponents that you can face in Survivor.io. If you are a newbie, feel free to read our article on tips and tricks for Survivor.io to improve your gameplay. It will run you through the core basics that every player needs to grasp if they want to survive. There's also a list of Survivor.io codes for free gems and coins.

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The Escapists 2 is a strategy survival game with a lot going on. You start off by playing convicted felon, living in prison. However, your real goal is to escape prison and survive without being locked up in cells. You can plan your escape, craft items, take along some of your friends, and then slowly make your escape. You will need to manage escaping with actually surviving in prison - skipping meals and not being present in the jail will cause suspicion, which will get you caught before you are even out of there.

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Another zombie-focused survival game, LifeAfter has some pretty impressive graphics, to keep you impressed. There are lots of areas to explore and items to find that might be useful to survive, but there are also tons of monsters looking to annihilate you. You can find camps to live in, build your own, and even help other survivors if you’d like. There is a big blend of sandbox and survival in LifeAfter, which makes it unique.

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In The Bondfire, you are looking to build a shelter in a snowy, harsh landscape. There are management aspects in The Bondfire, with workers to control, resources to find and constructions that need to be built up so that you can last. Along with the horrible weather, you will also need to survive against monsters who see you as food. It’s a more casual experience but still feels much like other popular survival games.

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Jurassic Survival is a survival simulator in Jurassic Park! You will find many different types of dinosaurs. Moreover, you will have to fight with them for resources and territory. The gameplay is a bit similar to classic survival games where you will have to collect resources and create buildings to protect yourself from dinosaurs.

You are not going to find zombies, an apocalypse, or a nuclear war. Indeed, Jurassic Survival setting is different from other games of the genre. There is also a huge open world, and the map is divided into several locations. You can freely move to those locations, but some of them are full of dangerous dinosaurs, which might be a threat to you.

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Sheltered is an awesome survival game that looks like a mobile version of Fallout. You will have to be in charge of a group of people and develop your own base. Fans of the genre will definitely like the nuclear apocalypse setting. However, there are no zombies. Your base is an underground bunker that was built to protect people from nuclear radiation.

You will have to create characters for your underground bunker. Each person has their own characteristics and abilities. It is also necessary to monitor their needs. If you are looking for Fallout gameplay on mobile devices, you should try Sheltered.

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Otherwise, if you're looking to play something a little more relaxing without having to worry about surviving the apocalypse, you can check our top 5 Android games like Animal Crossing or our best farming games for Android!