I’ve been reviewing Everspace 2 over the last couple of weeks and it’s got me thinking about early access games on Steam. Everspace 2 officially launched this week, but I first played it in January 2021 when it hit early access, and rarely thought about it since. It’s nice to revisit it now and see how much it has evolved over the years, but I wish I had checked in more often to see how it was developing along the way. I feel the same about Terraformers, an exceptional strategy game that left early access last month, and Boratrauma, a horror-tinged submarine sim that’s been around since 2019, b♕ut only hit 1.0 in March.
I forgot about all of these games for years, which I now regret. For every huge early access hit l✨ike Valheim or Phasmophobia, there’s a hundred more that are just chugging along, getting updates, and slowly improving over time. In an effort to shine a spotlight on some games before the✨y launch, here’s some of my favorite early access games you probably forgot about.
Craftopia
Craftopia started its early access journey in 2020, and has seen some major improvements and updates over the years. It’s impossible to put Craftopia in a box, since it’s trying to be every kind of game at the sameཧ time. It has Breath of the Wild open-world exploration, survival/crafting like Rust, elaborate base building and automation like Satisfactory (another early access gem), hack-and-slash combat like Monster Hunter, farming sim elements, dungeon crawling, RPG systems - the list goes on and on. The remarkable thing about Craftopia is that it actually works. It seems like you shouldn’t try to make every game at the same time, but so far, Pocketpair seems to be pulling it off.
7 Days To Die
Launching in 2013, 7 Days to Die must be tied with Project Zomboid as the oldest early access game still in active development. Updates are few and far between, sometim🥂es as few as one major patch a year, but the small development team at The Fun Pimps has remained dedicated to the game for more than a decade. If you’ve never played 7 Days to Die, it's an open-world FPS zombie survival game with a true sand𒈔box environment.
Aside from blasting zombies and l🍰ooting vacant buildings, one of the most entertaining things to do is to dig tunnels between your base and nearby towns. Players have spent countless hours constructing elaborate networks of tunnels across the map, and it's a lot of fun to jump into someone's game and see what they’ve created. The base building and tower defense aspects make this a unique zombie survival game that’s still a ton of fun to play with friends even all these years later.
Moonbreaker
Moonbreaker has only 💙been in early access since last year, but I don’t want to miss an opportunity to promote one of my favorite new games of 2022. This is a skirmish-style war game and the best tabletop experience I’ve ever seen in a video game. You assemble an army of minis and compete against other players across a variety of dense maps, and you can even paint the figures. Moonbreaker got a lot of flack for its monetization at launch, but all of the loot boxes and microtransactions have since been removed. It just had a major update that added new units and gameplay mechanics, so it's a great time to revisit this one.
Death Trash
Death T✤rash is a Fallout 2-inspired ARPG and the most upsetting game I played in 2021. This is fleshpunk - a post-apocal💟yptic wasteland made covered in mutated viscera where everyone acts like cultists and worship meat monsters. Development has slowed down a bit and the original development timeline has been largely abandoned, but if you like pixel art and exploring immersive, disgusting worlds, there’s a lot to love here.
Zenith: The Last City
Zenith is an MMORPG built for VR, and I loved every second I spent with it early last year. It offers the kind of social experience that Zuckerberg ruined his company in pursuit of, and it’s only gotten better with new content, full body tracking, and a Pokemon-style pet catching system. It’s got all the trappings of an MMO, like dungeons, raids, and gear progression, but the VR functions take it to a whole other level. The community i🐓s incredibly welcoming and helpful, and I had the best time adventuring through the game, meeting other people along the way, and having impromptu, unforgettable adventures together. You don’t need to wait for the full launch to have a great time with Zenith, I promise.
