Not a full release for Sons of the Forest though, as the developers announce. Alex is happy, however, that the highly anticipated survival game is coming out in Early Access.
Early Access is the politician of survival games. Constantly unasked for, but promising a rosy future, only to ultimately fail to meet its goals in the least. Nevertheless, I sit here now and tell you: I”m absolutely relieved that Sons of the Forest decided to go Early Access after all.
I never thought I”d type something like this on my keyboard either. Early Access is good? Yet I only recently wrote in my article on The Day Before that survival games are plagued by eternal Early Access phases and give the genre a bad name! I still stand by that, but with Sons of the Forest there are two crucial points why I prefer the unfinished state.
I”d rather have a mediocre Early Access than a crappy full version
Something must have gone wrong in the development of Sons of the Forest if after two postponements there is still no finished game available. As annoying as it may be, the developers now had three options: Either release the game in a disappointing state, postpone Sons of the Forest a third time or switch to an Early Access release.
First variant is currently used by far too many games for my taste. The Callisto Protocol, Forspoken, even the actually outstanding Hogwarts Legacy is currently still struggling with technical problems. On the one hand, this is annoying for the players, but of course it doesn”t encourage them to buy. In the long run, the studio”s image will also suffer. A third postponement would also have been daring. Even the last fan would have been critical of the game;
The Early Access launch is the best compromise: On the one hand, the expectations are different. Any technical and content-related problems will presumably still be solved, but the impatient fans can still take a helicopter ride into the forest. As if that wasn”t advantage enough, the game is also cheaper until the final release. Endnight Games has made the best of the lousy situation with this decision.
You can watch the trailer for Sons of the Forest here:
Community feedback is crucial!
Sons of the Forest can now offer what many other Early Access games promise but fail to deliver: Involving the community in the development. Endnight Games has many more opportunities to implement changes requested by the fans, precisely because of the unfinished state. This also applies to other Earl Access games, but I have more confidence in Endnight in this case.
I would be a little more cautious with most projects, but The Forest studio has already proven that they listen to community feedback. After all, the predecessor The Forest was also in Early Access for four years until the final release. Regular updates have kept the game alive for a long time, and fans have been able to see their wishes put into practice. Some technical problems persisted, but in general I can say: Endnight Games knows what Early Access should look like.
That”s why I”m still optimistic about the 23rd of February, when Sons of the Forest will be released unfinished. Because sometimes even politicians keep their word.
What do you think of the Early Access decision? Are you still looking forward to Sons of the Forest or would you rather wait for the final release? How did you feel about the Early Access phase of The Forest back then? Feel free to let me know in the comments
