Survival Game Name Generator

Survival game titles follow a few recognizable patterns because the genre sells a feeling before it sells a story. The most durable names are single blunt nouns that describe the material you will be fighting with or against: Rust, Raft, Grounded, Valheim, The Forest. A one-word title works best when the word is physical and slightly hostile, which is why Ashfall, Permafrost or Saltmarsh land while something abstract like Destiny does not. The second pattern is the place-name: a coast, valley, station or colony that the whole game takes place in, often with a short subtitle added for sequels and expansions.

The sub-genre changes the vocabulary. Cold-weather survival pulls from ice and exposure (whiteout, crevasse, thirty below). Island and ocean games use wreck, reef, flotsam and tide. Outbreak games borrow medical and quarantine language, wasteland games borrow radiation and salvage, and space survival leans on airlocks, oxygen and landfall. Sentence titles like Don't Go Out at Night or Nothing Grows Here read as horror-tinged and suit smaller, story-driven projects.

The names below span all of those styles. Use the short ones as working titles for a game, jam entry or Steam page, the place-names for custom servers and persistent worlds, and the subtitled forms when you need a season, DLC or mod pack name.