Son of the Forest didn’t launch on Steam this morning at 9 am Pacific, but it did become available for purchase about an hour later unless you run into error messages. Everything that Valve’s store was full of seems to have cleared up, as the early access survival game has jumped from the top of Steam’s most wanted list to the top of its bestseller list (opens in new tab), the company Knocking off Heroes 3 to the second spot for the week.
Sons of the Forest has over 250,000 concurrent players on Steam (opens in new tab) on its launch day, making it the platform’s third most-played game right behind CS: GO and Dota 2 and ahead of Hogwarts Legacy Is. (This updated article was below Hogwarts when it was first published.) It is currently the most viewed game on Twitch (opens in a new tab).
The open-world survival game is the follow-up to 2018’s The Forest, which left players stranded on an island full of cannibals after a plane crash. Sons of the Forest sends us to another wild island, this time in search of a missing billionaire, and luckily for us, this island is also full of mutant cannibals.
As is the way with modern survival games, chopping down trees is an essential activity in Sons of the Forest, which will see us building more and more complex weapons and buildings as we progress. However, there’s an interesting addition to the survival formula here: NPC companions who can help us with less-exciting survival tasks, like chopping down trees.
PC Gamer’s Chris Livingston jumped into Sons of the Forest as soon as he downloaded it, and I’m not sure what he’s doing right now, but he’s holding up his own severed head in the first screenshot he shows us (above). was kept. So I think things are going well and he is cutting down a lot of trees.
Sons of the Forest costs $30 on Steam (opens in new tab), and we’ll let you know how we get on. Steam user reviews are currently “very positive,” but the game has only been out for a few hours, and it’s the kind of thing people will want to put tens or hundreds of hours into.
The developer expects Sons of the Forest to remain in early access for “6-8 months” and says the final version will include bug fixes, “balance and core gameplay” improvements, more items to craft, build and discover. . and “Additional game mechanics and lore.”