My new passion for survival games looks like Minecraft, but is much more complex – and you won’t find it on Steam

When Stalker 2 came out last week, I was hoping that it would feature some new survival systems alongside its anomalies and artifacts. It’s been almost 15 years since the last Stalker game and the survival genre has really grown a lot in that time. Maybe, I thought, this time Stalker 2 will have a real crafting system, or weapon and armor repairs that I can do myself instead of paying an NPC, or a more complex food system than simply shoveling uncooked food into my face, if that Hunger symbol appears.

Spoiler alert: There is none of that. Stalker 2’s survival systems haven’t evolved in the last 14 years. That’s fine! I’m enjoying being back in The Zone, even though (or perhaps because) not much has changed. But I’m still looking for a new game that can really satisfy my survival hunger, and I think I found it this week.