Summary
Open-world gameshave changed a lot over the years. But one consistent thing that appears across most large-scale open-world adventures is the ability to engage in some sort ofcraftingof weapons, armor, potions, or other useful objects.
From survival games to RPGs, there are a huge number of open-world games that give players the ability to engage in intriguing crafting and building using a variety of materials. From the simple and small to the enormous and incredibly useful, crafting in modern games has become a world of open possibilities. These are thebest open-world games with great crafting.
Updated on November 12th, 2024, by Chris Harkin:Although there are always new open-world games on the horizon, it does feel like the huge expansive worlds being created across the gaming industry take a lot of time to craft. This makes it difficult for players who have ventured across a number of magnificent worlds to keep finding something large and wondrous enough to satiate themselves. It is even more difficult, perhaps, to find a great crafting system that makes use of many different elements from the game’s world, and allows players freedom to create a huge volume of the things that they can imagine fitting into the game’s world and being of use in some fashion. A video version of this article has also been added.
The name is almost Craft, and while that might just be a coincidence, the sheer scale of things that players can and must make in order to last long in this seafaring game is completely purposeful.Raftis an amazing game that allows players to come together with their friends and feel the real frustration ofhow difficult it is to survivewhen set adrift at sea.
Trying to gather materials and survive all while facing the threats of sharks and very dangerous survival meters,Raftkeeps players on their toes and forces them to learn quickly how to craft and survive out on the open water.
Though it has a sequel now which has continued the franchise,Ark: Survival Evolvedremains a fantastic example of an open-world survival game that blends genres and has a great crafting system. Players gain more Engram points as they continue leveling up inArk, allowing them to create more and better tools, structures, and clothing, to name but a few.
It can be difficult getting to grips with the crafting systems in many games, but whileArkdoesn’t hand-hold too much in the early part of the game, players generally shouldn’t be left feeling lost either. These are some of the hallmarks of a great crafting system, as it is both understandable and yet expansive and elaborate.
Although it has been nearly a decade sinceStarboundwas released, it remains one of the most beloved games in the survival genre. Allowing players to venture out onto an unknown planet in a procedurally-generated 2D landscape,Starboundfeatures a vast level of crafting from simple blocks and food all the way up to huge blueprints for much more imaginative ideas.
Starboundis a traditional survival game for crafting in many ways. Crafting tables are required for most things, complex blueprints need to be found before they can be used, and as players progress they will be able to put together better weapons and armor to defend them across a dangerous and unknown planet, as the player attempts to return to their spaceship with the parts needed for repair.
Valheimhas been accused by some players of being too intricate and grindy as players who want to craft some ofthe larger and better items in the gameare forced to hunt for materials, sometimes for a long time, before achieving their goals. Other players insist that the realistic experience makesValheimone of the best open-world games available for crafting.
It is difficult to judge whether there is too much to the material-gathering process in any survival game, and it will come down to how much each individual player is willing to put up with, butValheimdefinitely has a great crafting system and a wide-open world.
Rustis another game that is custom-built for pain and frustration. In large multiplayer servers, players could build large bases and craft some great materials and items using the unique crafting style, only to lose it all and have their world come crashing down around them in minutes.
Rustis one of the most intense open-world survival options out there, and while this game will forever cause players to go into a rage at their losses, there is always so much to create and build anew that most will end up returning to it eventuallyor finding similar gamesthat can be equally brutal.
Starfieldhas proven itself to be among some of the most ambitious games ever released. The nature of the open-world exploration of hundreds of planets is only a little marred by the extra time it takes to travel between them, and there are many ways in which this new Bethesda game finds huge success. One of these successes comes in the form of the open-world exploration that players must engage in for materials.
The crafting inStarfieldcomes with a real twist to it, one that is familiar to fans of Bethesda games likeFallout 4, but which has been advanced fantastically since then. Weapon mods are available and can take a lot of real effort to create, but they aren’t forced upon players as a necessary part of the game. Bethesda has mastered the art of delivering great open-world crafting options without forcing them upon players.
One of the earlier examples of an open-world survival game,Don’t Starveused a randomly generated open world to intrigue and fascinate players until they were sucked in by the mixture of survival and crafting as well as the fun roguelike gameplay.
Don’t StarveandDon’t Starve Togetherare both great examples of what can be done in a simple format without insane graphics in building a believable world that can be extremely difficult and rewarding to survive in. Features such as the sanity meter makeDon’t Starveone of the darker survival gamesavailable.
There are survival games, and then there are factory and management games. Few games have been bold enough to cross these ideas, andSatisfactorydoes more than just blend them. This is the first open-world, first-person factory-building type of game.
Players find themselves in an alien world where they have to survive and gather materials to create factories, slowly automatizing everything they need. The first major goal is to build a space elevator, enabling the player character to export items off-world for their employers.Satisfactoryis a hugely fun game that has been in early access for five years, but is predicted to fully release sometime in 2024.
One of the very best at allowing players to craft in unique ways,Subnauticadrops the player into an alien ocean and forces them to survive with only the materials they can scavenge and the items they can craft from the local resources. From building laser cutters to propulsion rifles and even vehicles and bases,Subnauticahas a massive variety of crafting.
Players can choose to playSubnauticain a number of different ways, and with the scale of the open ocean where they can gather resources from, there is almostno limit to how much they can createin a single run of the game.
The Forestis unique in that it allows players to craft some of the most insane items imaginable. There are simple things such as weapons and shacks they can create. There are some stranger items like houseboats and traps, and then there are bloodied trophies of their enemies' heads, and even worse, theyuncover the bloody secretsof the island.
The Foresthas a unique crafting style, which allows players to find a lot out for themselves about what they are able to put together. A lot of what can be made does make perfect sense and gives players the real feeling of putting together a survivable atmosphere on an unfriendly island.
