Sons of the Forest Now Available in Early Access

Sons of the Forest, the much-anticipated sequel to The Forest, is now available on Steam! It took an hour longer than expected, but it’s finally here. With its unique blend of clever enemies, terrifying caves, and satisfying survival crafting mechanics, The Forest was a massive early access success. Released in 2014, the game ended up selling over 5 million copies as developers Endnight Games continued to expand and improve upon the title until its release in 2018. Not bad for a game with an initial budget of $125,000, huh?

While sequel Sons of the Forest was originally planned to be a regular release, Endnight announced earlier this month that in light of all the things they still wanted to add to the game, they had decided to release Sons of the Forest in the same fashion as its predecessor — in early access.

Given that Sons of the Forest is set to be significantly larger than the previous title, and include new features like companions and even more advanced enemy AI, it wasn’t a huge surprise that the studio ended up opting for an EA release. It had already been delayed twice, and it’s clear that either feature creep (or at least overly optimistic deadlines) have been a part of the game’s development cycle for a good while. While a game suddenly being released in EA instead of 1.0 might have come across poorly with another title, given how successfully Endnight developed The Forest in early access, it wasn’t as much of a disappointment as the announcement may have otherwise been.

In any case, it’s out now, and only time will tell if Sons of the Forest can live up to the high bar set by The Forest. In the meantime, we’ll be ordering Kelvin around and trying to work up the courage to finally enter a cave…

Sons of the Forest can be purchased on Steam for $30 USD. While it may become available on other platforms at a later date (likely once the game hits 1.0), for now Valve’s platform is the only place you can purchase the game.