Back in 2020, Obsidian Entertainment launched Grounded in early access. It was the RPG studio's first survival game, and that initial foray came with an inspired hook: what if you had to survive indefinitely in the backyard from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids?

Despite not being a big survival game person, I was instantly intrigued by the comic twist on a genre that tends to deal in deathly serious terms. This was not a game where you would get tetanus. It was a game where you might get killed by an ant while trying to take shelter in a Coke can.

It expanded my idea of what a survival game can be. Yes, I can easily imagine having to survive if lost in the woods or on a deserted island or in a nuke-ruined post-apocalypse. But, if you expand the viewfinder a bit, there are plenty of other situations that would be challenging to live through. Though the fact that it's a family comedy gives the ending away a bit — I mean, they’re not gonna die out there — it would be extremely difficult to overcome the set of circumstances the characters in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids find themselves in. It isn't gritty, but it would give Bear Grylls a run for his money.

It has me thinking about which other lighthearted family movies from the '80s would make good survival games. A theater near my house was showing Ferris Bueller's Day Off last week and I went to see it for the first time since high school. You might not think about it when you're watching it, but Ferris' goal in the movie isn't unlike your goal in a survival game.

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Like a player setting out to leave the comfort of their base, Ferris ventures out of his home where he could’ve enjoyed a risk-free day pretending to be sick. Unfortunately, he needs to fill his Fun meter and help Cameron level up his Courage stat. He goes to the city and, like a player dodging dangerous monsters in the wilderness, he barely avoids being seen by both his father and Dean Rooney on multiple occasions. He barely makes it home before his parents, and faces one more brush with danger when he arrives, as Rooney is lying in wait at his house. I'm a sucker for games set in a suburban setting and a Ferris Bueller-inspired survival game that had the player attempting to get up to hijinks in the Chicago suburbs while sidestepping authority figures could be a ton of fun.

The Blackout Club, a co-op horror immersive sim set in a small town where a group of teens are investigating a series of eerie occurrences, was a fun example of suburb survival.

Of course, the juggernaut of '80s family movies is E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. The movie has built-in villains with the governmental organization that moves in to capture and study E.T., and you could build a game around an Elliot-like character venturing out into the suburbs and forest to retrieve supplies for his alien friend without setting off the suspicions of any adults. The original E.T. game is notoriously bad, having been developed in a matter of months to coincide with the Christmas rush. Spielberg’s wrinkliest alien deserves a second chance at greatness.

And family movie survival deserves a second chance, too. Grounded is great, but it shouldn’t be a one-off. Chibi Robo once taught us: the smaller you are, the bigger the stakes. And you don’t have to be two-inches tall to be small. Being a kid is scary because you’re weaker and smaller than everything else. And, survival games should learn, when everything is bigger than you, survival is a challenging thrill.

Survival Week at TheGamer is brought to you by Nightingale - available on PC in early access February 20

Survival Week

Genre Survival, Survival Horror Sponsored by Nightingale Dates February 12-18, 2024 Franchise Minecraft Games Nightingale, Enshrouded, Palworld, DayZ, Valheim, ARK: Survival Evolved, Frostpunk, Pacific Drive, STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Project Zomboid

Welcome to the home of TheGamer's Survival Week, a celebration of all things, well, survival. Here you'll find features, interviews, and more dedicated to this popular genre, brought to you by Inflexion Games' upcoming open-world survival crafter, Nightingale.

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