I've been playing a bunch of survival games recently, and have noticed some great features that the games in the genre implement. It's unfortunate, however, that most of survival games put emphasis on some parts of the great survival game formula, but not all or even most of them. To be clear, I'm not claiming that the notes I am proposing for building an awesome survival game are the template every survival game must follow, but they are definitely things to consider. The focus of the notes is more so to make the single-player experience compelling. Co-op and multiplayer is not covered here, and is a different sort of beast to handle.
