The key to a story driven survival game is making the story be the reason to move forward in the game. You need to get somewhere for some reason, or you need to stay somewhere for some reason. Make each step of the journey justified by story. I must say that I fail to see the problem here.

It all depends on how much story, how you want to implement it, and where you implement it. If you have too many (and too long) story segments on each level/area the pace of the game will be slower and the players might get bored, that is a far worse problem I'd say. I think it would be essential to put the story in the game in small portions divided over each level/area. Story is not just the major cutscenes or conversations between characters. It can also be discovering places, finding missing characters, following characters, overhearing a conversation, saving characters that in return help you with something, etc. Make every objective and event in the game be a part of the story <-- winning concept.

I feel that I am being a captain obvious at the moment, hopefully you feel some kind of guidance from my stating the obvious rants. If you present an overview of the story segments in your game and some kind of description of the game it would easier to help you.

By survival game do you mean a game mode where you play until you run out of lives and then have to start over?

If that is the case, one thing you could do is have the players first finish the story mode before they can unlock the survival mode, but since the concept is designed for a survival mode, that doesn't seem like the best idea.

I think that in this case you can't really have your cake and eat it too without detracting from the value.

I might be missing the point entirely though, in which case i'd like you to clarify what you mean.

I might be missing the point entirely though, in which case i'd like you to clarify what you mean.

I might be missing the point too... but he could mean a survival game in the terms of Left 4 Dead and such games. I think their genre is called Survival Horror? If it is that kind of survival, which I based my post on, it could work very well. If it is the kind of survival mode that you mean, well I guess it would be a lot harder. At least if he intends to have a story thicker than one page.