Sons of the Forest is still coming out in February, but now it's early access

Sons of the Forest
(Image credit: Newnight)

The hotly-anticipated horror survival game, Sons of the Forest, has been delayed - sort of. The devs are holding to the February 23 launch date, but now the game's coming out in early access.

"There is still so much more we want to add; items, new mechanics, gameplay balance and more," the devs at Endnight say in a new Steam blog. "We didn’t want to delay again so have instead decided to involve the community in the continued development of this project and keep our February 23rd release date but instead release in Early Access."

Sons of the Forest has been delayed multiple times since its announcement back in 2019. Alternate realities would've had us playing it in May 2022 and October 2022. The devs announced the delay to the current February 23 date as "one last" push back, and it seems they're keeping to that launch promise even while asking fans to lower their expectations for the final release.

The original game spent nearly four years in early access, and the devs attribute the game's success "mostly to the awesome community and the suggestions, feedback, and bug reports the players shared with us." Here's hoping Sons of the Forest's stay in early access produces similarly worthwhile results.

Endnight previously announced that the game would launch at a price of $29.99 USD, though it's unclear whether that'll remain the price in light of the early access switch. Sons of the Forest is currently only set to come to PC, though the devs have noted that they'd "love to come to console in the future."

Find out a whole lot more about Sons of the Forest in our preview.

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.