Best Open-World Games Set In Harsh Climates

The open-world genre is on a never-ending cycle of impressive growth, having gone from a curious and impressive but ambitious idea to the norm for most modern genres of gaming. The freedom to explore huge worlds at a player’s own pace is something which every gamer should experience at some stage, and there are a lot of ways to build a great open world.

With survival becoming a major aspect of many open-world games, it's unsurprising that many developers take to setting their games in harsh parts of the world, or even the cosmos, to give players a new sort of challenge. The refreshing idea of having the climate and weather itself turn into an adversary has made for some fantastic gameplay mechanics.

Updated on August 4, 2024, by Chris Harkin: Though open-world games have become increasingly popular over the past decade, most like to have a variety of different biomes and feel to the world to make them feel larger. For that reason, there aren't a whole lot of games that are completely or even mostly set in a single harsh environment of some kind, but these show that it can be a dangerous and challenging thing to bring to an open-world environment. As more games in the open-world genre push the boundaries of what sort of world can be explored in a free-roaming format, there will be more exciting entries added to this list of harsh climates that have made for exciting gaming history.

Conan Exiles

A Harsh Franchise & Dark World

Despite not having been a major cinematic force in many years, the team at Funcom took on the challenge of bringing the world of Conan the Barbarian into gaming, and in a huge survival setting no less. The world of Conanhas always been unfriendly, but the updates brought into Conan Exiles make it a brutal survival experience, including some changes to the general climate.

From the very beginning, the player character starts by being crucified on a cross and slowly dying under a blistering desert sun. Conan himself arrives to save the player, and they are then free to journey across the brutal desert, attempting to survive. While other biomes have been introduced in continuous updates since the initial release, most of them, including a frozen northern area and a dangerous volcanic region, can be described as harsh areas to try and survive in, either against NPC enemies, or in multiplayer against other players.

Mad Max

A Broken World Beyond Repair

Another game based on a major franchise, Mad Max, is an action-packed ride through a haunting wasteland that contains very little hope for life or the remnants of humanity still haunting it. Although the game is open-world, there is a heavy focus on vehicle combat and building Max's car throughout the game with found scraps. Walking across the Wasteland is heavily advised against.

Though Mad Max has been largely forgotten about as a game, it is a fantastic place for fans of the films and exciting action gameplay. The game follows Max as he makes his way across the brutal Wasteland with the intention of taking on Scabrous Scrotus and his crew. Players have reveled in getting such a weighty exploration of Max's world, despite it being a truly bleak and challenging one to survive in.

Sea Of Thieves

Trapped On The High Seas

One of the best games for experiencing the true beauty and wonder of the ocean in a tropical locale, Sea of Thieves looks like it comes with the ideal climate off the bat. However, tropical, areas like this come with their own challenges. Players don't simply get to ride about freely as pirates, experiencing whatever aspects of the game they choose, unless they run into other players looking for violence.

Sea of Thieves has many dangers, including the potential for brutal storms due to the heat. Besides monsters and other dangerous deep-sea creatures, the back-breaking level of work to run a ship in such a climate with so few crew would actually be brutal, although Sea of Thieves isn’t a survival game and is more about gently enjoying the beauties of this harsh part of the world.

Dying Light

Zombie Land With Middle East Heat

There are plenty of games in which players have to deal with zombies infesting every inch of open-world maps. However, there are few games, zombie-filled or otherwise, that are set in locations as baked with heat as the Middle East. Dying Light blends these two and creates a truly inhospitable environment that sounds terrible to live through.

Set in a fictional Middle Eastern city called Harran, Dying Light features zombies that are slow-witted and present little danger, at least during the daytime. With the dynamic day-night cycle, the zombies shift and become much more deadly at night. This, along with the heat, humidity, and the ruins of the city being the backdrop make for a harsh climate and environment. It also, however, makes for a massively fun game to parkour and fight through.

The Long Dark

The Frigid Canadian Wasteland

One of the trickiest survival games available today, The Long Dark challenges players to survive following a plane crash in the frigid wilderness of Canada. One of the most realistic and brutal survival games in the genre, players are very alone and unable to ever really find the sense of ease that comes with time in most survival games.

This harsh cold climate isn’t often found in gaming, but in this part of the world, it is realistically challenging even to just find enough heat to survive a single night. The game takes many fascinating details into account, from calorie intake to exact body temperature, making The Long Dark a truly stressful experience.

Green Hell

A Survivalist's Nightmare Environment

At the opposite end of harsh climates is Green Hell, another survival game that is both realistic and brutal, but instead of being set in a frigid wasteland, this one takes place deep in the Amazon Rainforest, considered by many to be the most dangerous region on Earth. Not only are there local tribes to contend with, but the forest itself works against players as they attempt to navigate even simple problems, like what is safe to eat and where is safe to sleep, in such a dangerous environment.

Players have a smartwatch, which helps them maintain a balanced diet, but they receive no further help and indeed are hindered further by hallucinations that creep in throughout the game. The challenges associated with surviving in a climate like that of the Amazon Rainforest are well-known, but Green Hell takes that realism to another level.

Subnautica: Below Zero

A Frozen Wasteland

The sequel to the hit game Subnautica once again puts players in an unenviable position on an alien world, which they are free to explore at their will, but also at their peril. Instead of merely being trapped in an ocean with little reprieve, this time players have to worry about the extreme cold of this frozen wilderness, as well as surviving the threats of the ocean they must explore for resources.

Players need to build vehicles, tools, and bases to survive both the ocean and the cold, experiencing even more harsh climates and environments the further they venture from their starting area. Below Zero remains the most recent entry in the Subnautica franchise, giving players a lot of time to explore the secrets in the frozen wilds.

Death Stranding

Desolate Land, With BTs And Rain That Ages What It Touches

There aren't a lot of games that manage to get across the kind of deep and abiding messages that Death Stranding holds. Messages about how caring for someone opens you up to a horrific loss, how unchecked power is incredibly dangerous, and how humanity is heading toward its own extinction. The post-apocalyptic world is bleak and a harsh place to live, which is why Sam, as a courier, is one of the brave few who venture out into the wilderness away from the isolated colonies.

The BT aliens in Death Stranding produce horrific environmental effects, leaving the world devastated. Not only do the remnants of humanity have to deal with BTs creating nuclear-sized explosions when they consume a living being, but they also must deal with Timefall, a rain that rapidly deteriorates and ages anything caught within it. This sort of world is one of the most bleak to imagine living in, out of any video game world.

Starfield

Space: The Least Hospitable Environment

Bethesda’s most recent major release has somewhat divided fans and critics, but one thing that they are all impressed by is the variety of environments that can be explored across the hundreds of planets in the game. Starfield allows players to roam the cosmos at their own pace, even focusing a great deal on the fauna and flora of the different planets.

Starfield is a game with one huge focus above all others: scope. The sheer breadth and diversity of the worlds that can be explored, many with brutally harsh climates that can’t be survived for too long, allow players to feel as if they’re truly exploring the Universe. Additionally, space itself is the harshest of all climates, and players get to spend a lot of time out there as well.

The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim

Dragons, Draugr, And Other Monsters Roam These Cold Fantasy Lands

Another exploration of a harsh world from Bethesda, it is very possible to live within Skyrim, but most players probably wouldn’t want to. Much of the country is relatively inhabitable, but entire mountainous areas and most of the northern section of the country are covered in brutal frozen wastelands and swamps that can hardly be traversed.

Players were able to deal with the landscape without much difficulty though, until the anniversary edition of Skyrim added a survival mode. Players now curse the brutal frozen areas, as they can barely be explored due to the Dragonborn actually beginning to rapidly freeze when they reach the area. Nords are harsh and sometimes outright cruel people and their country suits them.