Unturned

Unturned features several different game modes, all with the same basic concept of zombie survival. The game also has multiple difficulty settings.

In the survival game mode, the player's character is spawned on a game map with clothes depending on their skill set. Players must find weapons and supplies to survive against the zombies. As the player progresses through the game, they gain experience points that can be used for upgrades or, on specific maps, as currency for trading. Survival mode is also available in multiplayer.

The game's story is can be found in written notes and environmental storytelling spread out across all of its official maps.

On the Washington map there is a lab belonging to a company known as Scorpion-7. Outside the lab, there is an overrun military unit. In the basement of the lab, there are canisters containing zombies in stasis, and one of the canisters is broken. Also in the building there is an apology note, and the implication is that the writer was attacked before the note was completed. The Scorpion-7 lab is assumed to be ground zero for the start of the zombie outbreak, and while the exact origin and the cause of the outbreak remain vague, it is heavily implied that the virus was inadvertently created through the company's bioweapons research when a test subject escaped from their containment.

Unturned was developed by Nelson Sexton, an indie game developer from Calgary, Canada. He was sixteen at the time of Unturned's first release. Sexton has been developing games since he was nine. His first games, Battlefield and Deadzone, were created in Roblox and became two of the most popular games on the platform at the time.

Deadzone was a zombie-survival game similar to Unturned. Neither of Nelson's original Roblox games are still on Roblox, as they were both made private due to security issues, which resulted in Roblox being flooded with copies of both games.

According to gaming website Kotaku, Unturned was one of Steam's most popular games in mid-2014. Both Kotaku and Rock, Paper, Shotgun characterized the game's popularity as unexpected, since the game is mainly developed by a single person without a major studio's resources. PC Gamer said that while Unturned had "few real ideas on its own", it was a "simple, accessible survival-simulator" that players may enjoy provided they could "stomach the low production values". In 2017, it was in the top 10 most played games on Steam, having rarely ever fallen lower in the rankings since the week of its early access release.

By January 2023 the game broke its peak lifetime player count record with 112,648 concurrent players. As of October 2025, 90% of all Steam reviews of the game are positive.