Sons of the Forest Hits Steam Early Access

Sons of the Forest, the long-awaited sequel to the 2018 survival horror video game The Forest, is now available on PC via Early Access on Steam.

The open-world survival horror simulator, created by the Canadian indie video game development company Endnight Games Ltd, takes players on a mission to find a missing billionaire on an island infested with cannibals.

The undead in popular entertainment

The response to the early access release on Steam has been very positive, reflecting the popularity of the original game and the prevalence of the survival horror in popular culture. The genre has boomed as The Walking Dead, starring Andrew Lincoln, ran for eleven seasons between 2010 and 2022 with spinoffs such as Fear the Walking Dead and a series of video games based on the popular TV franchise.

 

Helpful non-playable characters

But appealing to fans of horror survival is just one aspect of video game development. The key is to keep the genre fresh. One innovative feature in Sons of the Forest is represented by the friendly NPCs in the form of Kelvin and Virginia. A major update has added a host of improvements including a patch which makes Kelvin, the popular AI companion, even more helpful. As a work in progress, the patch, adds a wide range of updates including a hang glider, additional story elements, and the ability for cannibals to jump out of trees to attack you!

The pros of early access release

The development team at Endnight Games fielded a wide range of questions about further innovative features at a Q&A session organized by The Sons of the Forest Discord. The team revealed that a decision was made to either delay the release for six to eight months or launch The Sons of the Forest via early access to solicit help from the community to complete the game. As the early access release of The Forest had been such a positive experience, the team opted to do the same for the sequel.

Another benefit of early access release is that the developers have the opportunity to add popular features. Players were especially keen on seeing the log sled return, but the developers were not aware of this, particularly due to the number of bugs in the feature. Now the decision has been made to include the feature. However, there are no specific plans to release the game on PlayStation or Xbox.

With further story and cutscene additions slated, new features, and bug fixes set to appear in future patches, there will be plenty of innovations and improvements in store for fans with plans to limit griefing certain to be popular with many players.