How to Play the Survivor Simulator

You are a contestant

Choose a fictional castaway and play their actions and secret vote. There is one way to play: take part in the game yourself. There is no spectator or automatic-season mode.

Your run ends when you are eliminated, including at the final-four fire challenge. Your finish and decisions are saved; review them, return as the same contestant, or choose someone new. Finalists make their own final statement and read the actual jury votes before revealing the champion.

Existing contestant saves retain their original rules. Former spectator saves can be reviewed or exported as archives; they cannot be continued as spectator games or converted into a contestant run.

No account is required. Browser saves and exported JSON backups are supported; cloud saves, competitive rankings and public sharing links are not enabled.

Create your season

• Choose any of 20 fictional castaways with fixed names and appearances. A new season randomly draws 11 opponents and splits the cast evenly between two tribes. Preview the actual lineup or draw new opponents before entering; your chosen character stays in the cast. Optional customization supports 16, 18, or 20 contestants.
• Edit five attributes: social, strategy, physical, puzzle, and perception. Each ranges from 20 to 80; together they total 300.
• All supported casts merge at ten players. Three reach the finale, with seven jurors.
• Idols are optional, with at most two in a season and no replenishment. An optional tribe swap happens once at 14 players and is unavailable for a 12-person cast.
• The event seed controls play for the displayed cast; changing it does not redraw your opponents. Saved cast settings, seed, engine version and action history let a season be replayed consistently.

Follow each round

• Camp: Career offers up to two optional actions. Build relationships, gather information or search for protection; you may head straight to immunity. NPCs act within their own two-action budget.
• Each camp action, encounter response and private reply pauses on its result before you choose again. Read the actual response, energy change and remaining time, then continue for free. Public campaigns and the final-four fire outcome also have their own result scene; immunity, tribal ballots and jury votes keep their interactive reveals. Refreshing preserves an unread result in the current browser tab.
• Meet someone on the shore to talk, ask for an alliance or observe their connections directly. Looking, reading their introduction and walking away are free; each explicit action costs the displayed camp action and energy. Their response reflects the actual result, and is restored when you reload. An alliance is not a guaranteed vote.
• At daybreak, a short camp thread connects an outstanding protection deal, a merge or swap, an observed relationship cost of your plan, or yesterday's public vote pressure to your next choice. Find a nearby deal partner directly for free; people on another beach cannot be summoned. The opening thread gives way after you spend a camp action. A castaway's window also remembers your pending protection deal or a past shared camp encounter. Spending time together does not fulfil protection: the later council's survival result does.
• Challenge: tribes compete before the merge; contestants compete individually afterward. Immunity protects the challenge winner from the vote. New Career challenges reveal the actual winner and your voting situation before private talks. Continuing from the result costs no energy or action and does not rerun the challenge.
• New seasons offer two roles for each challenge: lead the obstacles or anchor the puzzle, assemble from memory or inspect patterns, start conversations or watch tells, plan the route or follow landmarks. Each role weights its main skill at 60% and its secondary skill at 20%, plus 20% starting energy. Public conditions are announced at camp and give the matching role 8 performance points. Weigh this edge against your own skills; NPCs do the same. Choosing a role is free; choosing effort runs the challenge and opens its result.
• The challenge result shows your actual performance and place, the tribal average margin or individual winning gap, and the contribution of conditions and practice. Open Review this run for the skill, preparation, starting energy, conditions, effort and execution breakdown. Reading or revisiting this result is free and cannot reroll it. Ordinary execution varies by up to 8 points; pushing hard adds another 8 points of uncertainty in either direction.
• Steady effort requires and spends 15 energy; pushing hard requires and spends 27. Save energy spends up to 5 and remains available even at zero energy, with its performance penalty. Unaffordable efforts cannot be selected. At final immunity, weigh winning control of the final three against keeping strength for fire: if you lose and the winner does not bring you along, you make fire immediately without resting. Remaining energy contributes alongside physical skill, perception and uncertainty; conserving does not guarantee survival. If you lose immunity, its result shows your actual reserve before you hear the winner's choice. Older saved seasons keep their original effort rules.
• Your notes gather the actual conversations, agreements, camp observations, public plans and protection you still owe. The last council's observed reactions stay dated in your notes, including while responding to a new camp encounter and after you spend time rebuilding a bond. Those are earlier reactions; later actions can change relationships. Open notes at camp, in private talks or at the voting table. Reports remain reports; there is no confirmed-vote counter. Complete name lists let you find campmates or council partners directly, without walking through every page.
• The twenty default fictional contestants have distinct attribute distributions with the same 300-point budget. Public temperament describes differences in how they weigh bonds, threats and resentment, respond to appeals, and conserve energy. These tendencies influence choices without guaranteeing any vote.
• Strategy: council participants have up to four private conversations. NPCs propose reciprocal deals; hear their accounts, suggest another target, offer future protection, or disclose your plan. You may keep plans private or campaign publicly.
• Changing the name under discussion is free. Accepting an incoming plan still uses its original target, shown in your response; a counterproposal uses the name you selected. Each response spends one talk, including refusals. Future protection and the risk of sharing your target are shown beside the response.
• Council: submit a legal vote and choose whether to use an idol before any votes are revealed.
• Before locking a ballot, reminders name conflicting voting agreements and earlier protection deals due at this shared council. Protection is judged by whether the promised contestant survives. You may still choose any legal ballot; reminders never change or submit your vote.
• Reveal: protected votes are cancelled, valid votes are counted, and the round ends with an elimination or the published exception rule.

NPCs do not read your secret vote. Career keeps other ballot writers anonymous, even after the tally. NPCs react to survival, public campaigns and shared information, not an omniscient record of your ballot.

Read the game board

The round tracker highlights your current stage. After the challenge, view the actual scores: tribal immunity uses each tribe's average, while individual immunity goes to the highest-scoring contestant.

In Career, the camp map shows current tribemates' relationships toward you: Strong, Friendly, Uncertain or Strained. Solid lines mark allies. Select a name below the map to inspect their profile. The map does not reveal precise NPC trust, hidden inventory or future votes.

At tribal, open one ballot at a time or read all remaining votes. Cancelled votes remain visible but do not count. A revote starts a fresh tally. Read the result before confirming whose torch goes out. The fire-side reading resumes at your last opened ballot when you refresh this tab, including a return to the revote table you already confirmed. Loading a save starts a fresh reading. Reading does not change the resolved result or consume randomness; its position stays in this tab rather than in the downloaded season save.

If you refresh this tab while writing a secret ballot, your unfinished name and keep-or-play idol choice return together. An erased name stays blank, even if you previously agreed on a target. An unfinished revote remembers only a tied name; you cannot add an idol during a revote. Restoring choices never casts a ballot or spends an idol: review them and cast it yourself. Casting, creating a new season or loading a save clears the draft. Drafts stay in this tab and are not included in downloaded saves.

Your season, round by round

After a torch is extinguished, the round recap shows who left, who had immunity, the deciding rule and highlights from the round. Career also shows whether your last ballot matched the elimination, chose a different target or was cancelled by an idol. A resolved vote does not enter the Season story until the elimination is confirmed.

Back at camp, your recap separates counted votes against you on the first ballot and any revote without identifying their writers. It also notes an allied contestant's departure and upcoming merge, tribe swap or final-four transition when applicable. Other ballot writers remain secret.

Your ending includes a personal recap. An early departure explains the confirmed council result or final-four fire loss. After the winner is revealed, finalists see their own jury votes; tied results label the initial count. Open Look back at my decisions to read your immunity wins, successful vote plans, effective idol plays and ballots matching departures. This records outcomes, not who secretly led or supported a vote. Reading the recap is free.

Open Season story to revisit completed rounds, including the final-four fire challenge and the jury result. At the end of the season, the full standings list every contestant's finish, immunity wins and valid votes received. These vote totals include both initial ballots and revotes; cancelled ballots do not count.

Your Career record shows championships, best and average finishes, immunity wins and recent finishes. Filter by completed seasons, championships or early departures, or search by contestant name or seed. Voting accuracy uses the total correct ballots divided by all recorded ballots; when you revote, your last ballot represents that council. The history travels with your JSON save and remains local to this browser.

Career camp actions

New seasons offer a camp encounter each round: helping repair shelter, choosing a side, investigating a clue, practicing with a rival, repairing betrayal, or sharing food. Each response uses one existing action point and shows its cost. You may use ordinary camp actions instead; there is no penalty for ignoring an encounter. History with the same person is remembered, and council resentment can lead to a repair conversation.

Following a trail clue costs 1 camp action and 12 energy; searching afterward costs another action and 15 energy. Before you commit, the encounter explains whether you can still search today. The clue improves your next search by 30 percentage points if an idol remains hidden, is kept across days until you search, and is consumed even on a miss. Your trail shows your personal conditional search chance; your notes retain an unused clue. Joint practice gives you 12 temporary physical and your partner 20, plus trust; solo practice gives you 20 and harms their trust. Both count as your once-per-round training.

Immunity is a quick choice of effort: compete normally, conserve energy, or push harder for a better chance and more attention. Pushing harder adds performance on average but also adds variability; a particular all-out run can score below a steady run. Tribal immunity averages everyone’s performances, while individual immunity uses your own score. New Career seasons resolve the challenge immediately; route boards remain only in older saves. Immunity changes who can be targeted, rather than becoming a separate puzzle each round.

Before tribal, an NPC may ask you to join a specific vote in return for keeping someone safe at your next council together. A promise constrains your future choices, not your energy. Hearing an account does not buy support, and a counteroffer can be refused. NPCs choose ballots using their interests, relationships and known plans rather than fixed promise-success percentages.

In new seasons, being refused does not stop you asking what they need. An unchanged proposal cannot spend another talk after refusal: change the name, offer future protection, or find someone else. A changed relationship or situation can reopen the proposal. Read the reply before choosing your next approach; considering names and continuing a result are free.

Private conversations may contain cover stories. Confiding your target to someone close to that person can warn them and provoke a counterplan, without revealing the leak to you. Public campaigning may recruit supporters but alerts the target and connects you to the move. There is no displayed certainty meter or guaranteed majority.

Protection deals persist until a later council shared by you, your deal partner and the protected person. Deals due tonight appear at the voting table even before you write a name. Survival fulfils the deal; losing that person costs trust. Voting for someone else does not guarantee their safety. Voting agreements are assessed through public outcomes and ballot counts, which cannot prove individual loyalty. Secret votes do not automatically produce identified betrayal. Strategic credit still requires actual effective supporting ballots; public moves can also affect jury relationships.

After the vote, known relationship damage from a disclosed plan is shown at camp return. If a deal partner or protected contestant has already left, that future protection deal can no longer come due; the result explains this immediately. Original conversations remain memories, while pending protection lists show only deals involving people still in the game.

An action cannot spend energy you do not have. Social choices influence other contestants; pushing a target does not guarantee that an NPC follows your plan.

Idols, ties, and the final four

Idols must be used before votes are revealed, and their target must be in that council. The final-five council is your last chance to play one: the final four uses a fire challenge, where idols cannot protect anyone. You may play only one idol at a council; any you keep after the final-five vote go unused. The voting table reminds a holder of this deadline without forcing a play. A tie leads to one revote among the tied contestants; tied contestants do not cast revotes.

If a tie persists, nobody can revote, or all votes are invalid, our original fan-game rule uses an endurance tiebreak among eligible unprotected candidates. If protection leaves no legal elimination candidate, the round rolls back and uses challenge immunity only, with an explanation in the log.

At the final four, the challenge winner brings one contestant to the final three. The remaining two compete in an abstract fire challenge. The loser becomes the seventh juror. A losing tribe with only one contestant casts no self-vote; its sole eligible member leaves through the original endurance fallback. These rules are not presented as a recreation of every historical Survivor season.

If the final jury vote ties, this game's original tiebreak counts each juror's existing preferences between the tied finalists. Read the initial tie, then open the tiebreak ballots one at a time or read the rest of that round. The tiebreak tally starts fresh; initial counts stay labelled beside the finalists, and the other finalist is outside the tiebreak. No new speech or simulated vote is needed. Finish reading the deciding round before revealing the champion. The winner scene gives the tiebreak count, and the journal records both rounds. A remaining tie uses the saved draw under the original rules.

The jury and a returning career

Seven jurors choose among three finalists using relationships, strategic achievements, challenge performance, and a final statement. Each juror has a visible strongest interest derived from their social, strategy, and physical attributes. A statement earns more support when backed by actual achievements or bonds and matched to that interest. A tie is resolved among tied finalists using retained scores, then a saved seed if needed.

Career tracks finishes, championships, and voting history across seasons. A returnee season keeps the previous lineup and your chosen role; cast size and opponent redraw are locked. Relationships, energy, items, and alliances reset. Optional editing remains available, with your own original attribute budget fixed. Elimination never silently revives your contestant.

Save, resume, and replay

The save format includes a schema version, engine version, seed, random state, season state, and event history. A save is written after every completed action or phase, keeping the last three valid local versions. Imports are checked by replaying the initial cast and recorded actions before they replace the current game.

New seasons use rules 1.10. Existing contestant saves from 1.0 through 1.9 replay and continue under their original rules until your run ends; importing does not upgrade an ongoing season. Spectator saves remain archives. Imports use validated JSON up to 1 MB. An incompatible or damaged save must not replace a valid existing save. Browser-device results are sandbox results, not a cheat-proof competitive ranking.