10 Best Survival Games on iOS & Android (February 2026)

Looking for the best survival mobile games in 2026? Survival games have become a favorite for players who enjoy adventure, crafting, and exploring. These games put you in exciting situations where smart moves and quick thinking help you stay alive. You can build shelters, collect resources, and face new challenges in every session. Whether you like fast action or slow planning, there’s something fun for everyone. These are some of the best premium and free-to-play survival games available on Android and iOS.

What Defines the Best Survival Game?

For me, a good survival mobile game should offer more than just crafting and building. It needs to keep things interesting through exploration, smart progression, and freedom to play your way. Some games give full control with open maps and deep resource systems. Others focus more on managing people, making quick choices, or surviving tough situations. What matters most is how the game keeps you hooked every time you jump in. To choose the games for this list, I looked at variety, gameplay depth, replay value, and how well the survival element is done on mobile.

List of 10 Best Survival Games on Android & iOS in 2026

Every game listed here brings its own flavor to survival.

10. Vampire Survivors

Endure endless monster swarms through strategic upgrades

In Vampire Survivors, survival begins the second a run starts. You select a character, enter a stage, and enemies immediately begin approaching from all directions. Your character attacks automatically using a starting weapon such as a whip, magic wand, or throwing knife. You do not press buttons to attack. Your responsibility is movement, guiding the character across the map to avoid being surrounded. Defeated enemies leave behind experience gems. Collecting these gems fills a level bar, and each level grants a choice between new weapons or upgrades to existing ones.

Over time, the screen fills with larger enemy waves, mini-bosses, and environmental hazards. You can carry a limited number of weapons and passive items, so decisions matter. Certain weapon and item combinations unlock evolved versions that deal massive damage or cover wider areas. Between runs, you spend collected gold on permanent upgrades and unlock new characters, each with unique starting weapons and stat bonuses.

9. Granny

Escape a locked house while avoiding a silent predator

Granny is a first-person horror survival game that locks you inside a creaking, dimly lit house with one clear objective: escape within five in-game days. You wake up in a small bedroom, and the front door is sealed with multiple locks that require different keys and tools to open. The entire house acts like one large puzzle. Drawers may contain a safe key, the safe may hide a weapon part, and that weapon may help you unlock a new area. You need to move carefully and slowly because noise attracts danger. Walking across certain floors, knocking over objects, or opening doors too quickly alerts Granny, who patrols constantly and reacts to sound with surprising speed.

Hiding is just as important as searching. You can slip under beds, climb inside wardrobes, or stay silent behind furniture while she investigates. If she catches you, you lose a day and restart from your bedroom with limited progress saved. Items cannot be carried all at once, so planning routes through the house becomes essential. Taken as a whole, it delivers one of the most gripping survival horror adventures on Android and iOS.

8. Raft Survival: Ocean Nomad

Survive at sea by expanding a fragile wooden raft

Raft Survival: Ocean Nomad begins with you stranded on a tiny wooden raft floating in endless water. There is no land in sight, no rescue coming, and no instructions beyond staying alive. The first few minutes teach the core system clearly. A plastic hook becomes your lifeline. You aim it toward floating debris such as wooden planks, barrels, leaves, and scrap pieces, then reel everything back to your raft. Those materials are not just random junk. They form the foundation of your survival.

Hunger and thirst meters constantly decrease, so collecting raw fish and purifying seawater quickly becomes urgent. The shark circling your raft is a constant threat. It attacks randomly, damaging sections of your platform that must be repaired immediately. Over time, your fragile raft transforms into a floating base capable of sustaining life across an endless ocean. For those who want a raw survival experience on their phone, Raft Survival would be a perfect pick.

7. The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands

Lead a fragile settlement through cold nights and danger

The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands places you in a frozen wilderness with a single campfire and limited supplies. From that point forward, your task is to turn an empty snowy landscape into a functioning settlement. During daylight hours, you gather wood to fuel the fire and unlock new structures such as huts, workshops, and resource stations. Villagers gradually arrive, and you assign them roles such as woodcutter or guard. These assignments directly affect how quickly resources accumulate and how well the camp prepares for incoming threats.

Night changes everything. Hostile creatures approach under the cover of darkness, targeting your settlement and its people. Guards defend the camp, but maintaining enough weapons and healthy workers is essential. Food production must match population growth, since hunger reduces productivity and morale. Later, managing workforce balance becomes increasingly complex. Sending too many villagers to gather resources can leave defenses weak, while prioritizing combat strength can slow economic growth.

6. Don’t Starve: Pocket Edition

Search for supplies, craft equipment, and endure darkness

Don’t Starve: Pocket Edition drops you into a procedurally generated world with zero guidance and no safety net. You control Wilson, a scientist trapped in a hostile land filled with bizarre creatures, dangerous terrain, and unpredictable seasons. Survival revolves around three primary stats: health, hunger, and sanity. Hunger drains steadily, forcing you to gather berries, hunt small animals, or farm crops for sustainable food. Health declines due to enemy attacks, environmental hazards, or spoiled meals. Sanity decreases when you spend too much time in darkness or encounter dangerous creatures.

In this game, the day and night cycle constantly shapes your decisions. Daytime is used for gathering wood, stone, flint, and food. Night demands a light source such as a torch or campfire, since complete darkness summons deadly creatures instantly. Exploration reveals multiple biomes, including forests, swamps, rocky lands, and deserts, each holding exclusive resources and unique dangers. Long term survival depends on preparation, map knowledge, and efficient resource management.

5. This War of Mine

Manage civilians struggling through a brutal war

This War of Mine presents survival from a civilian perspective during an ongoing conflict. You manage a small group hiding inside a damaged house, and the entire structure functions as your base. During the day, snipers prevent safe travel outside, so time is spent indoors. You assign survivors to cook meals, craft tools, repair broken walls, or rest to recover health. Food must be rationed carefully, since supplies run out quickly. Characters grow hungry, fall ill, or become wounded, and untreated conditions worsen over time.

Night changes the structure of play. One survivor can venture out to scavenge abandoned buildings. Locations contain useful materials, but also armed guards or other desperate civilians. Stealth becomes crucial, since direct combat carries high risk. Moreover, inventory space is limited, which forces difficult decisions about what to carry home. In short, survival here means enduring scarcity, protecting humanity under stress, and making decisions that carry long-term consequences.

4. Fallout Shelter

Oversee daily life inside a post nuclear shelter

Up next on our best survival mobile games list, we have Fallout Shelter, a management-driven survival game set in a post nuclear world. You take charge of an underground Vault designed to protect people from radiation outside. The entire structure is shown in a side view, almost like a cross section of a building. Your task is to design and expand this Vault by constructing rooms that generate three essential resources: power, food, and water. If any resource runs low, the population suffers consequences.

Dwellers arrive over time, and each has unique SPECIAL stats that determine how effective they are in different rooms. Assigning the right person to the right job improves output and keeps systems stable. Balancing population size with available resources is critical, since rapid expansion without preparation can collapse your entire Vault. As the population grows, new challenges appear. For example, raiders may invade from outside.

3. PUBG Mobile

Outlast ninety-nine rivals in a shrinking battleground

PUBG Mobile is one of the most popular survival shooting games on iOS and Android, and its core idea is straightforward: one hundred real players enter a massive map, and only one individual or team survives. At the start of a match, everyone travels across the battlefield in an aircraft and chooses when to jump. Landing strategy shapes the early phase. High-value towns contain powerful rifles, scopes, armor vests, and healing kits, but they also attract heavy competition. Quieter areas offer safety, though the equipment found there may be weaker.

After landing, players search buildings room by room, collecting weapons and attachments that improve recoil control, firing range, and damage output. Meanwhile, a blue zone slowly shrinks the safe area of the map. Anyone caught outside this zone loses health over time, forcing survivors closer together. Long-distance encounters unfold across open fields using sniper scopes, while close-range battles erupt inside houses and narrow corridors. In the final minutes, only a handful of players remain, carefully scanning grass, rocks, and rooftops for the smallest sign of movement.

2. DYSMANTLE

One of the most loved survival games on iOS and Android in 2026

DYSMANTLE is an open-world survival adventure set on a post-apocalyptic island overrun by hostile creatures. You explore towns, forests, highways, and abandoned facilities from a top-down perspective. What makes it stand out is the ability to break nearly everything in sight. Furniture, fences, vehicles, vending machines, and even sections of buildings can be smashed apart using tools. Destroyed objects drop materials that can be used to craft items and unlock stronger weapons.

Combat plays a steady and deliberate role throughout the journey. Mutated enemies patrol different regions, and they attack on sight. You use melee weapons such as bats, machetes, and later more advanced gear to defeat them. Overall, DYSMANTLE creates a satisfying cycle of destruction, crafting, and discovery that keeps you exploring deeper into its broken world.

1. Subnautica

The ultimate open world survival game on Android and iOS

The final game on our best survival mobile games 2026 list is Subnautica, a survival adventure set entirely beneath the surface of an alien ocean. After crash landing on an unknown water planet, you must stay alive using nothing but basic tools and whatever the sea provides. Early survival revolves around oxygen management, food collection, and crafting essential gear. You swim through shallow coral reefs, collecting metal salvage, edible fish, and minerals.

Oxygen functions as a constant limit, which requires you to plan dives carefully and return to the surface before suffocation. Moreover, dangerous marine life patrols deeper zones, and some creatures defend their territory aggressively. Crafting stronger suits and defensive tools improves your chances during risky expeditions. Subnautica stands out because survival is tied directly to curiosity. The deeper you travel, the more you learn about the planet.