The 17 Best Games Like Surviving Mars, Ranked

Guide space settlers establishing an outpost on a remote planet. Grow food, collect energy, mine resources, manufacture bots, and build a self-sufficient colony.

RimWorld is a sci-fi colony sim. An intelligent AI storyteller drives it. It creates stories by simulating psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, climate, biomes, diplomacy, relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more.

Survive and thrive in a post-apocalyptic future. Resources are scarce, but opportunity calls. Build a disaster-proof colony. Protect your colonists and restore civilization. The world ended? That is just the start. Build and manage a colony after a world-ending event. Construct over 50 unique buildings for everything: resource collection, farming, exploration, and security. Build the Gate to enter the savage world beyond your colony.

Mine resources, research technologies, build infrastructure, automate production, and fight enemies. Design your factory with imagination. Combine simple elements into clever structures. Use management skills to keep it running. Protect it from creatures that dislike you.

Humans are gone. Droughts and toxic waste plague the world. Can your lumberpunk beavers do better? Timberborn is a sandbox city-building game. It features ingenious animals, vertical architecture, water physics, and terraforming. It contains high amounts of wood.

Satisfactory is an FPS open-world factory building sim. You play as an engineer on an alien planet. Complete ‘Project Assembly’—a massive machine for a mysterious purpose. Conquer nature. Build multi-story factories. Automate to satisfaction!

Discover and mine resources for building. Light your way in the dark. Explore and expand your surroundings to advance research. Capture the deep's diverse, highly-adapted flora and fauna. Beware: darkness hides horrors. Only light keeps them away.

Oxygen Not Included is a space-colony simulation. Inside an alien space rock, your crew must master science. Overcome new lifeforms. Use space tech to survive, or maybe thrive.

Frostpunk, from the makers of This War of Mine, is a society survival game. Heat equals life here; every choice costs something. In a frozen world, people build steam-powered tech against the cold. You must build the last city on Earth and secure survival tools for your community. Optimization and resource management fight empathy and smart choices. City and society management takes up most of the ruler’s time. Some exploration outside the city becomes necessary.

Aven Colony is a city-building and management sim. It tells humanity’s first settlement of an extrasolar world. Land on Aven Prime. Construct and maintain infrastructure. Ensure your citizens' well-being despite an alien world's harsh realities. The biggest challenge: keeping your people happy. How will you feed them? Will you give them jobs, entertainment, retail, and services while protecting them from planet dangers?

El Presidente is back! Prove yourself as a feared dictator or peace-loving statesman on Tropico. Shape the fate of your banana republic through four distinct eras.

Manor Lords lets you live as a medieval lord. Grow your starting village into a busy city. Manage resources and production chains. Expand your lands through conquest. Manor Lords uses late 14th-century Franconia art and architecture to shape gameplay and visuals. The game avoids common medieval tropes for a more authentic, colorful, and believable world.

Explore a galaxy of wonders in this sci-fi grand strategy game from Paradox Development Studios. Interact with alien races. Discover strange new worlds with unexpected events. Expand your empire's reach. Each new adventure holds almost limitless chances.

Banished drops you into a city-building strategy game. You control exiled travelers starting over. They have only clothes and supplies from home. Keep the population alive and grow it into a culture. Feed people by hunting, gathering, farming, trading, or fishing. You must plan sustainable practices for long-term survival.

Rule your land and dominate the world with freedom, depth, and historical accuracy. Write a new world history. Build an empire for ages.

Guide your nation from early 19th-century absolute monarchies. Expand and colonize. Become a great power by the 20th-century dawn.

The Dark Ages end. Europe remains in chaos. Petty lords fight beleaguered kings who struggle for control over their broken lands. The Pope demands a Crusade to shield Christians in the Holy Land. He refuses to give up control over bishop investitures and their wealth. Now is the time for greatness. Expand your lands and secure your dynasty's future. Fill your coffers. Appoint vassals. Root out traitors and heretics. Introduce laws. Interact with hundreds of nobles, each with their own goals. A good lord does this.