the Island

the Island has more of a story than most survival games manage. Something strange is happening in the world — people disappear, and then return as zombies — and your task is to find out what is going on and who is behind it, which takes you to the island that is the source of the infection. The genre is strategy with survival elements rather than a straight shooter, so collecting various resources is central and sometimes those resources are surrounded by things you have to fight for them. That framing makes the fighting purposeful: you engage because something you need is behind an enemy, not because enemies are the content. Investigation and survival run alongside each other throughout.