SurvivorCore

A batteries-included, creator-extensible survival game framework for Roblox.

⚠️ Status: early scaffold (v0.1.0). The foundation layer and architecture are in place; survival systems are being extracted from a production game (The Counter Earth) into this engine. APIs will change. Not yet production-ready.

What it is

SurvivorCore gives you the mechanics of a survival game — stats (energy/hunger/thirst…), inventory, crafting, cooking, harvesting, hostile mobs & combat, achievements, a codex, and player persistence — without dictating your content. You bring your own items, world, and art; the engine wires up the behavior.

See it live

SurvivorCore powers The Counter Earth — a full survival game built on this engine, and its live showcase. The Counter Earth is in closed Alpha (not yet open to beta testers), but SurvivorCore contributors and engine devs may get early access — a good reason to get involved. 👀

Two ways to extend it

1. Programmatic — register content from code:

local SurvivorCore = require(ReplicatedStorage.SurvivorCore)

SurvivorCore.Items.register({ id = "reed", name = "Reed", stack = 20 })
SurvivorCore.Recipes.register({
    id = "reed_basket", station = "hand",
    ingredients = { { item = "reed", count = 5 } },
    output = { item = "reed_basket", count = 1 },
})

SurvivorCore.start()

2. Creator-owned — attach behavior to your own objects:

Build any mesh, tag it Gatherable, and set attributes — no engine-side definition needed:

Attribute	Meaning
ItemId	what it yields
Yield	amount per full harvest
HP	hits to deplete

The same pattern extends to craftables, huntables, farmables, and more. For advanced, game-specific behavior (e.g. trees that physically fall and cut into pieces), hook into engine lifecycle events instead of forking the engine:

SurvivorCore.Hooks.on("gather:depleted", function(ctx)
    -- your custom drop / VFX / physics here
end)

Getting started

• Developers — consume via Rojo (clone + rojo serve) or, once published, as a Wally package.
• Drop-in — grab SurvivorCore.rbxm from a Release (auto-built from source via rojo build), drop it into ReplicatedStorage, and add a short bootstrap script that requires it and calls .start().
• Tuning, no code — owners can adjust the survival stats from a Studio form with the Survival Stats admin plugin. It's editor tooling, so it installs separately from the engine (built once into your Studio plugins folder).

Project layout

src/
  init.luau            -- SurvivorCore root: .start() + the public API
  foundation/          -- Config, Assets, EventBridge, Hooks, Registry (the core plumbing)
  registries/          -- Items, Recipes, Stats, Achievements, Codex, Appearance, Mobs
  components/          -- creator-facing tag/attribute components (e.g. Gatherable)
demo/                  -- a runnable demo place that consumes the engine
docs/architecture.md   -- how the layers fit together

Sponsor

SurvivorCore is free and open source. If it's useful to you — or you just want to help the engine grow — you can support development via GitHub Sponsors. 💛

License

MIT © 2026 Samuel Lison