XenoHaven combines a top-down survival sandbox with base management and real-time combat. You and up to three friends can join a four-player LAN session on the same local network, then gather materials, build a settlement, recruit alien familiars, and explore a world where the next underground passage may lead to useful ore or a boss fight.
You control one survivor at a time rather than a whole colony. The camera looks down across a colorful 2D world, so resources, paths, work areas, and enemies all share the same view. Co-op turns that single-character loop into a small group moving through a common world: you can build together, move and place things around a base, and head outside together to fight. The activity stays rooted in the same settlement and wider world, so a construction session can lead directly into a trip for resources or a fight against the planet’s creatures.
A settlement that keeps finding jobs for the group
The early rhythm begins with basic materials and simple tools. You gather wood, stone, plants, and other resources from the surface, then use them to craft equipment and place useful stations. A shelter gives the settlement a center; workbenches, storage, farms, and later machinery give it more ways to turn raw finds into something useful. As new technology opens, the base can grow from a place to sleep into a network of rooms and production areas.
A developed settlement brings several systems into one session: gathering ingredients, expanding the workshop, organizing storage, building together, or exploring the next region. The game does not assign players fixed professions. You directly control your character, while settlement helpers take on the repetitive jobs you have prepared for them.
Farming is more than scattering seeds. Crops and gathered ingredients can feed into cooking and manufacturing, while mining supplies materials for better tools, facilities, and equipment. A production line can push materials through successive stations, and the base’s layout matters because you are placing buildings, work areas, containers, beds, and farms in a space you shape yourself. You can keep the camp compact or make room for a longer chain of production. The focus is on watching a patch of ground become a working home, then adding new systems when exploration brings back better materials.
The settlement also has a commercial side. You can produce goods, stock a shop, and attract traveling merchants; a restaurant can serve food while also offering entertainment and lodging. That makes the base feel less like a storage box you leave behind and more like a place the surrounding world visits. New equipment and technology still require resources and currency, so expeditions feed the home economy, and the home economy can support later expeditions. Base development sits alongside resource-gathering expeditions and progressively tougher fights, linking settlement upgrades to the wider adventure.
Familiars do the work and join the fights
Alien familiars are central to the way XenoHaven links its settlement and combat. You can recruit them and assign them to jobs such as farming, mining, cooking, or crafting. Once a helper is set up for a task, it can keep materials moving through parts of the base while you spend time on other projects. Their work makes automation a gradual goal: the first camp needs your attention, while a developed settlement can handle more of its routine production through assigned creatures and facilities.
Familiars can also travel with you and fight. Their attributes and abilities can be improved, and the game offers ways to shape them through training and genetic changes. That creates a second reason to care about which creatures you recruit. One may be valuable around a work area, while another can help your active character when you leave the base. They remain helpers rather than a separate playable roster for the other people in your party; the group still controls its own survivor characters.
You and your friends can bring the settlement and its familiar workforce along as a common project, then step away from the farm or workshop to explore. The companions and production systems add a management layer around the characters you take into the world. If your group wants a sequence of short missions with a narrow objective, this wider build-and-explore loop is a different kind of evening.
Leave the walls behind for dungeons and bosses
A settlement can make the surface feel safer, but it cannot provide every material or answer every story question. Exploring new regions brings you to resources, other settlements, merchants, enemy factions, and entrances to underground dungeons. The dungeons narrow the focus: you move through enemy-filled spaces, gather useful materials, and work toward stronger opponents and bosses. Better tools and armor matter because some valuable materials and equipment are tied to deeper combat progression.
Fights happen in real time. You move your character around enemies and choose from a growing set of weapons rather than issuing orders to a squad. Swords, bows, staffs, and hammers give you different ways to attack, while armor and accessories add defensive or special effects. Some weapons consume ammunition, weapon skills bring their own cooldowns, and accessories can change damage, cooldowns, or how a build handles particular enemies. The equipment list becomes a source of variation: replacing one weapon or accessory can change what your survivor contributes in a crowded room or against a large target.
Familiars add another layer to those encounters. They can accompany your character into combat, and their growth can make them more effective as the dangers increase. A boss room can fill with projectiles and effects, so the screen becomes a busy view of your characters, companions, enemy attacks, and damage indicators. Some dungeon challenges grow tougher after major progression milestones. Your gear, helper growth, and access to new technology are all part of the wider loop around those fights, not separate co-op classes.
Equipment progression keeps pulling the group back toward the base. Materials from a dungeon can support new weapons or upgrades, while the farm and production setup can supply items for the next outing. Weapons can also carry resonance effects, and accessories offer bonuses against certain enemy types; a particular build can lean into faster skills, stronger boss damage, or other benefits. That does not turn XenoHaven into a short sequence of missions with fixed loadouts. It is a sandbox where long-term improvement comes from moving between the settlement, the wider map, and underground challenges.
A story route alongside the open-ended loop
XenoHaven gives the survival and building loop a main story about the Empire. At a key point, you can choose to obey or rebel. Each route leads to a different boss and ending, and the story update also adds weapons, building pieces, and resonance mechanics. That choice offers a reason to follow the campaign rather than treating the world as a base-building canvas alone.
There are also dynamic rules that periodically affect the world, from harvest or animal-reproduction boosts to drought and food-related events. Those shifts can change what is plentiful or how a settlement’s routines work for a while. The game has several dungeons and bosses, with later challenges connected to earlier progress. That structure adds goals for a group that has already established a useful base, while leaving plenty of time for building, decorating, farming, trading, or expanding production between fights.
Steam Workshop extends the appearance of the settlement. Creators can replace storage containers, buildings, and production-line visuals with custom versions. If your group likes to give a shared world a particular look, those creations can change the feel of its home while leaving the gather-build-explore loop intact.
What kind of co-op group fits?
XenoHaven suits friends who like a persistent-feeling world with more than one pace. A session can be about extending the farm, making a production chain more useful, stocking a shop, looking for new materials, or taking on a dungeon. The same group can move between calm construction and sudden combat without switching to a separate mission menu. Its open-ended structure is a better fit for people who want to build toward a more capable base than for a group looking for a short, tightly scripted round.
The PC version runs on Windows.
The stakes vary with what you choose to do. Farming, crafting, furnishing, and managing a shop leave room for a quieter evening, while a dungeon expedition asks more of your equipment and movement. The survival theme comes through dangerous enemies, progression, and the resources you need to improve your settlement and equipment. You can spend time improving a base before the next challenge or keep pushing into regions and bosses. That contrast gives your group options, though the technology and equipment climb makes XenoHaven a longer-running sandbox rather than a one-night story.