Survival mode, or horde mode, is a

game mode In tabletop games and video games, game mechanics are the rules or ludemes that govern and guide the player's actions, as well as the game's response to them. A rule is an instruction on how to play, a ludeme is an element of play like the L-sha ...

in a video game in which the player must continue playing for as long as possible without dying in an uninterrupted session while the game presents them with increasingly difficult waves of challenges. A variant of the mode requires that the player last for a certain finite amount of time or number of waves, after which victory is achieved and the mode ends. The mode is particularly common among

tower defense Tower defense (TD) is a subgenre of strategy games where the goal is to defend a player's territories or possessions by obstructing the enemy attackers or by stopping enemies from reaching the exits, usually achieved by placing defensive struc ...

games, where the player must improve the defenses of a specific location in order to repel enemy forces for as long as possible. Survival mode has been compared to the gameplay of classic arcade games, where players face off against increasingly stronger waves of enemies. This mode was intended to give the game a definite and sometimes sudden ending, so that other players could then play the arcade game as well. ''

Power Instinct ''Power Instinct'', released in Japan as , is a fighting video game series created by Atlus. The series is known for its absurdist humor. Unique to the series was the introduction of the transformation feature: several of the characters can cha ...

'' added a Survival Mode, called 'Life Attack' to their

Super Nintendo The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in E ...

Port in November 1993. '' Street Fighter II: The World Warrior'' on the

Game Boy The is an 8-bit fourth generation handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on April 21, 1989, in North America later the same year, and in Europe in late 1990. It was designed by the same ...

introduced the mode in 1995, and both ''

Tekken 2 is a fighting game, the second entry in the '' Tekken'' series. It was released in arcades in 1995, and for the PlayStation in 1996. The original arcade version of the game was released in '' Tekken 5''s Arcade History mode for the PlayStation ...

'' and ''

Street Fighter EX is a 2D head-to-head fighting game with 3D graphics, originally released as a coin-operated arcade game for the Sony ZN hardware in 1996. It is a spin-off of the ''Street Fighter'' series co-produced by Capcom with Arika and was the first gam ...

'' included the mode in 1996 and 1997 respectively. Popular games that have a survival mode include zombie games such as those in the ''

Left 4 Dead ''Left 4 Dead'' is a 2008 first-person shooter game developed by Valve South and published by Valve. It was originally released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 in November 2008 and for Mac OS X in October 2010, and is the first title in the ...

'' series, games in the ''

Call of Duty ''Call of Duty'' is a first-person shooter video game Media franchise, franchise published by Activision. Starting out in 2003, it first focused on games set in World War II. Over time, the series has seen games set in the midst of the Cold W ...

'' series following '' Call of Duty: World at War'', and the tower defense game ''

Plants vs. Zombies ''Plants vs. Zombies'' is a video game franchise developed by PopCap Games, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts (EA). The series follows the affiliates of David "Crazy Dave" Blazing as they use his plants to defend against a zombie invasion, led ...

''. ''

Gears of War 2 ''Gears of War 2'' is a third-person shooter video game developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360. It is the second installment of the ''Gears of War'' series, with lead design by Cliff Bleszinski. The ga ...

'' introduced the term "horde mode" as an alternative name for survival mode, and subsequently picked up by other games such as ''

World War Z ''World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War'' is a 2006 zombie apocalyptic horror novel written by American author Max Brooks. The novel is broken into eight chapters: “Warnings”, “Blame”, “The Great Panic”, “Turning the Ti ...

''. Additionally, many

sandbox game A sandbox game is a video game with a gameplay element that provides players a great degree of creativity to interact with, usually without any predetermined goal, or alternatively with a goal that the players set for themselves. Such games may ...

s, such as ''

Minecraft ''Minecraft'' is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before being ...

'', take advantage of this game mode by having players survive the night time from a variety of monsters, such as skeletons and zombies. Another sandbox game, ''

Rust Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO(OH ...

'', uses both

non-player characters A non-player character (NPC), or non-playable character, is any character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster o ...

and other players as enemies, inviting

player vs player Player versus player (PvP) is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between human players. This is often compared to player versus environment (PvE), in which the game itself controls its players' opponents. The terms are mo ...

combat in order to survive in the game's environment.

References

{{Video game gameplay Video game gameplay