How Do Single Player and Multiplayer Survival Games Compare Balance-Wise?

 

Survival games have had a history of being almost exclusively single-player experiences and still tend towards being single-player even today. However, multiplayer survival games have started to pop up far more frequently in the last few years. Due to the addition of more players, survival games must change their design philosophy around to accommodate. I would argue that there are three types of survival games in this regard. There are strictly single-player experiences where only one person can play the game like Rimworld. There are then games like Rust that essentially require other players to function which would fall more in line with a strictly multi-player experience. In between these two types though are the games that offer single-player gameplay as well as multiplayer game play like Don’t Starve Together and Project Zomboid. 

Starting with the singleplayer exclusive games, these games tend to focus on the threat of the world around you be it through hunger, AI enemies, or something else like the weather. These single-player experiences can afford to be unbalanced since there is only one player directly interacting with the world. With Rimworld for example, players have to manage a colony and keep their colonists alive by building defenses against things like raiders and wild animals. However, players have the freedom to build their colony however they want which means they can also set up defenses however they see fit. One of the most popular strategies in this game is setting up ”killboxes” that essentially exploit the games system and prevents threats from fighting back. While this kind of design would be incredibly unbalanced in a multiplayer setting, it works due to the singleplayer setting of Rimworld. 

There are then the multiplayer exclusive games which tend to put players all on the same playing field. However, whereas in a single-player game, players tend to progress towards an objective be it given by the game or by themselves, multiplayer games tend to incentivize progression by offering advantages over other players. Many of these multiplayer games have PvP (Player versus player) combat so the game needs to be much more balanced in its approach. And as a result, the systems that allow progression have to be balanced far more heavily to prevent players from abusing a system or tool in the game. 

Finally there's the hybrid approach of having both singleplayer and multiplayer experiences available. With these types of games, the multiplayer tends to be more cooperative than competitive so that the same systems in single player can be used without modification. When it comes to the balance of these types of survival games, there tend to be two routes which developers take. Theres are games like Project Zomboid where there are very minimal changes to the balance of the game. In other words, another player is just plopped into the world without much change to accomodate balance even if it means making the game potentially easier. Then there are games like Don’t Starve Together where the changes to things like enemy health are made to make it more difficult for groups of people to just steamroll the enemies. However, since the game still must be played solo, the changes can’t be too extreme and so they don’t tend to change mechanics of the game much.