What Rust is
Rust is an open-world survival shooter where you wake on a mysterious island with nothing but a rock and a torch. The only goal is to last as long as you can, and almost everything works against you: the wildlife, the environment, other inhabitants, and other survivors. You have to deal with heat, cold, thirst and starvation while scavenging materials, building a shelter, and finding food before something else finds you. The island is filled with abandoned settlements, monuments, factions, and advanced underwater areas to explore, plus a jungle biome with its own animals, missions, and monuments. The world is procedurally generated, and there is a community map editor for making your own.
Playing together with your group
Rust is built around cooperation as much as it is around conflict. You can team up with friends, make alliances, and build a settlement together, sharing the work of gathering, researching the tech tree, farming, and wiring up electricity. Bases store your loot and defend your territory, so a group can split roles between builders, scavengers, and defenders. Getting around the island is easier in company: there are horses, modular cars, hot air balloons, helicopters, bikes, trains, boats, and more, along with large overground and underground train networks. You can host your own server with server-side modding support, and the game supports online PvP and online co-op, cross-platform multiplayer, and Remote Play on a tablet. Trading with other players is a valid path, and so is raiding their bases and taking what they have worked for.
What to know before starting
There are no rules in Rust beyond the ones you and your group set for yourselves, so decide early whether you want to be traders, hermits, or raiders. Expect a long game: you start with nothing and work up to tools, armour, weapons, farms, and vehicles. Other survivors are a constant factor, and the island keeps changing through regular content updates that add new maps, weapons, vehicles, utility items, monuments, terrain, and seasonal events. Recent additions include a primitive game mode with siege weapons, a graphics and environment overhaul, and upcoming work on modular boats, the deep sea, tropical islands, floating cities, the character model, an apartment complex monument, more animals, and cave and tunnel upgrades. Accessibility options cover adjustable difficulty, adjustable text size, colour alternatives, subtitle options, custom volume controls, stereo and surround sound, and camera comfort. Valve Anti-Cheat is enabled, and Steam Achievements, Trading Cards, and Workshop support are available.