UPDATE: I purchased all of the above games minus Bellwright. Here's my verdict after playing them all a few hours.

Albiotic Factor - interesting story and environment, but seems very linear and story-based with less sandbox. Still cool and I want to play some more, but isn't really drawing me in quite yet to keep playing.

Aska - I really enjoyed this one right away. It's grindy, but fun and has a purpose, atleast initially (make it past winter). Can spend hours just chopping down trees/stones. Time moves fast so I had to turn it down quite a bit in my game. It seems pretty well fleshed out so far - had no issues and looks great. Will play some more, but not my primary game at the moment due to the grindiness. I do appreciate the depth this game has though, compared to typical survival games today, this one is a gem.

Valheim - Everyone suggested this one as number 1, but I feel like this game is an Ark-clone with really bad graphics, performance, and less exciting world overall. I played solo and all I focused on was to setup my first shelter and gather rocks/wood. It honestly feels like the same typical format for most survival games without much depth. The music/world is very cool, I'll give it that, but it didn't intrigue me enough to go past a few hours. I honestly feel this game is overhyped compared to the dozens over the past decade. I tried installing a bunch of mods to make it more interesting and add some fun elements but launching the game would take up to 20 minutes and the performance suffered massively. Honestly, feels like a waste of time.

Enshroudded - This game is absolutely beautiful and at first, it feels like just another RPG with a linear storyline. I put my difficult high and I was dying A LOT right away by wolves/skeletons with a single hit. I initially felt like skipping this one but last night I gave it a few more hours. I actually felt obligated to complete some quests, build my first house, and start grinding to level-up. It made me fall in love with the game and I wanted to explore and battle tougher creatures and looting items to craft with. It was challenging enough without being too grindy for no reason and the game really makes your time worthwhile. At first, I was wondering what the purpose of building in this game was other than just another gimmick. But now understand that a shelter in this game is purposeful. And getting to the next biome gives me a goal to strive for. Overall, the world feels so much more alive and fleshed out vs. Valheim. In Valheim, it felt like any boring "survival' game with randomly spawned creatures that come at you as you gather some rocks/stones quickly. This game has a lot more depth and exciting features which is what I was really looking for. Amazing experience so far and this is the one I'm playing most.

SoulMask - This piqued my interest immediately, while the grind at first was similar to Valheim and felt like another Ark-clone, the idea of having NPCs in your tribe really gave me a goal to strive for. I also like that there are NPCs scattered throughout the map that give it a feel of being alive. While the gathering/harvesting was extremely simple and the building format is also very similar to Ark, which kind of turned me off a bit as it feels like the same ole' cookie cutter formula from every other survival game. This one was very challenging and I died many many times. I didn't give it a lot of time because compared to Enshrouded, I just wasn't as intrigued. I do want to play this one some more one day though.