Survival mode facts for kids
Survival mode, also known as horde mode, is a fun way to play video games. In this mode, your main goal is to stay alive for as long as you can! The game keeps throwing tougher and tougher challenges at you.
Sometimes, you just need to survive for a certain amount of time or beat a specific number of challenges. If you do that, you win! This game style is a lot like old-school arcade games. Back then, players would face endless waves of enemies, trying to get the highest score before they were defeated.
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Survival Mode in Tower Defense Games
Survival mode is super popular in tower defense games. Imagine you have a base, and you need to protect it from waves of enemies. You build defenses and upgrade them to stop the bad guys.
A very early example is Rampart, released in 1991. A more modern and well-known game is Plants vs. Zombies. In Plants vs. Zombies, you use different plants to stop zombies from reaching your house. The longer you survive, the harder it gets!
Survival Mode in Fighting Games
Even fighting games have their own versions of survival mode. In these games, you usually fight one opponent after another. Your health might not fully recover between matches, making it a real challenge to last long.
Power Instinct added a "Life Attack" survival mode to its Super Nintendo version in 1993. Other famous fighting games like Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (on Game Boy in 1995), Tekken 2 (1996), and Street Fighter EX (1997) also included this exciting mode.
Survival Mode in Cooperative Shooter Games
Many shooter games let you team up with friends to survive together. This is called cooperative survival mode. You and your teammates work together to fight off waves of enemies.
Killing Floor, which started as a special version of Unreal Tournament 2004 in 2005, helped make this mode famous. Other popular games with survival modes include zombie games like the Left 4 Dead series. The Call of Duty series also added survival modes after Call of Duty: World at War. Gears of War 2 even called its version "horde mode," a name that many other games, like World War Z, now use.
Survival Mode in Sandbox Games
Sandbox games are games where you have a lot of freedom to create and explore. Many of these games also have a survival mode.
In Minecraft, for example, players must survive the night. Monsters like skeletons and zombies appear when it gets dark, and you need to build shelters or fight them off. Another game, Rust, challenges players to survive in a harsh world. You face not only computer-controlled enemies but also other real players who might try to take your stuff!
