Yes, you will need to manage your hunger, thirst, and health-and as you ratchet up the tech tree you will discover increasingly effective ways to stay alive-but that's it. Most of the servers are on a strict weekly or monthly reset schedule, which scrubs the island of any lingering housing or fortifications left behind by the players, which gives the experience a strange sense of futility. There is no grander narrative, or mythos, or win condition. Wake up naked, run for your life, do horrible things to one another. Rust famously does not quarter off its servers to keep entry-level nakeds away from the roving troops suited up in advanced firearms, which means that occasionally, your journey will end with you matching another player's revolver with a rock that you've tied to a stick. Eventually, from those same basic ingredients and a few mechanical leaps of faith (like work benches and furnaces), you'll be able to craft pistols, flamethrowers, and rocket launchers. This is similar to the scrounging mechanics in plenty of other survival games, but what makes Rust different is how deep that tech tree goes. You quickly figure out that, by banging your rock on a few environmental doodads, you can harvest a few basic resources (stone, wood, and cloth) which you can parlay into a few prehistoric instruments, like a spear or a hatchet.

You wake up on a map armed with only a rock and a torch. If you're somehow unfamiliar with the premise, think of Rust as a dumber, more nihilistic Minecraft.

The game was first released in Early Access in late 2013 by developers Facepunch Studios, and it's been a mainstay of goofy YouTube send-ups ever since.

If it feels like we've been living with Rust for a long time, that's because we kinda have.

Age of rust download