Open-World Games That Challenge You With Scarcity

For many open-world games, the draw is not exploring a sandbox-style power fantasy, but rather being pushed to the limit by the difficulty that is present in every aspect of the title. Open-world games can be difficult through their combat, the moral decisions they present players, or even through the breadth of content required to truly complete them.

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For games with a vital component to managing health or crafting equipment, however, scarcity can be a powerful tool in pushing players and increasing difficulty. For those looking to be challenged or do some urban dumpster diving, here are some games that present a challenging scarcity of resources.

5 Fallout 4

The Rarest Resource Is Whichever One Is Currently Needed

While Fallout 4's faithfulness to the older titles and their RPG roots is questionable, the crafting system is perhaps the most involved and intuitive of the series. Collecting resources often feels less like a grind and more like the fruits of an expedition, scouring abandoned office buildings looking for items to break down into screws or the all important adhesive.

When resources are hard to singularly produce though, and instead must be scavenged or bartered for, it's very easy to find oneself lacking the specific components of an important weapon or base feature. The wasteland creates scarcity, and only those willing to brave its furthest depths will find an abundance of those vital crafting components.

4 Kenshi

This Surreal Post-Apocalypse Hides Its Resources Well

Kenshi's environment is hostile, to put it kindly. Toxic bogs and arid highlands hide a host of old world materials needed to progress in any of the game's main pillars, be it combat or base building. For manufactured goods, once a steady supply of base materials has been farmed, the process is fairly easy, but finding the mechanical components to create rum stills or weapon benches can be quite difficult.

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The resource scarcity in Kenshi can be quite daunting, especially for beginners. In order to create many of the crafting modules the game offers, a base or house must first be established, which in itself is a trial of either money or resource accrual in a game that is conservative with both.

3 Outward

An Unforgiving Fantasy Experience Built On Resources

Outward is, in many ways, a very atypical open-world RPG. The emphasis on survival and slower-paced gameplay puts the title in a different niche than most fantasy-action titles. In the world of Outward, hunger and cold are as likely a threat as any creature.

Perhaps owing to this emphasis on survival, this title has a scarcity of resources and can be quite confrontational to new players. The magic system is built around having the appropriate material components to cast spells, and while a well-stocked wizard can overpower almost any threat, there is also a good deal of struggle in finding all the necessary resources, making for a rewarding, if challenging, experience.

2 Project Zomboid

Food And Medicine Are Treasures

In the unforgiving world of the zombie apocalypse, it should come as little surprise that all the necessities needed for survival have begun to dry up. Project Zomboid is a game where resource scarcity prompts difficult decisions and, similar to Fallout 4, acts as a driving force in the gameplay.

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It's a title that can be quite tough on beginners, but those that push through are rewarded with a very deep gameplay loop revolving around surviving the perils of the zombie apocalypse; although crafting components and medical resources are both scarce and do not respawn, pushing players further and further out on every resource run if they want a steady supply of materials.

1 Vampyr

There's Only So Much Blood To Go Around

A tighter and smaller open world than the standard of games today, especially as map size continues to increase, Vampyr was an incredibly compelling and poignant game all about balancing the hungers of being a bloodthirsty monster with the protagonist's own morality and the ethics he swore to uphold as a medical practitioner. The game's map is often filled with smog-choked alleys and dark, dust-filled nooks and crannies, representing 1920s London with aplomb.

Players can't just drink anyone's blood to further their vampiric powers in Vampyr. Instead, only the blood of those the protagonist has built up a strong relationship with resonates with them, and the stronger the relationship, the more potent the gifts that blood brings. In this sense, the resource that is scarce in Vampyr is humanity, a very telling metaphor considering the post-WWI timeframe of the game, and also a fantastic gameplay mechanic to represent the moral dilemma of the player and protagonist.

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