Early Access News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

When No Rest for the Wicked was released in Early Access, there was excitement, bt it wasn't without issue. Initially, the game had a staggeringly unsteady frame rate and other technical issues — which is to be expected from a game in Early Access. But developer Moon Studio has rolled out patch after patch, rectifying these issues and more or less changing the game over a series of weeks. I had the opportunity to play No Rest for the Wicked in its earlier stages, marred by frame drops and freezes, and more recently, as the game itself has evened out. And what I’ve found lies beneath is a game that blends the isometric and action RPG genres together in a tantalizing way that could shape up to be something exciting, even if it isn’t exactly original.

Between Palworld, Helldivers 2, and now Manor Lords, it’s been a year of games coming out of left field and achieving runaway success.

"If only you could talk to these creatures" is never more funny or true than in games like Rotwood, where you play cat people and orcs sent to biff snail worms and flies with scythes. From Klei Entertainment, the gang behind Don't Starve, Invisible Inc. and Oxygen Not Included, to name but a three of their fine games, Rotwood is out later today in early access, ready to provide co-op highjinks in a roguelike dungeon crawl that is really a forest. A forest crawl. You'll get muddy knees.

No Rest for the Wicked's first early access hotfix has been rolled out, and a second patch is «already in progress».

Roguelike deckbuilder Tetra Tactics exited Early Access after a year and a half yesterday, finally making it to its full release on Steam.

Red Barrels has opened up about what's next for its deliciously gory cooperative horror, The Outlast Trials.

A new trailer for Greedfall 2: The Dying World premiered at this year’s Nacon Connect livestream. The trailer gives us our first look at the game’s story, where we see the player character fight to free herself from enslavement.

Greedfall 2: The Dying World will launch in early access.

Nightingalelaunched into its official Early Access this week to plenty of anticipation and mixed feedback, as it presents a unique theming and spin on the popular co-op survival game. But it turns out that many players didn’t want the co-op part, as the game has plenty to offer already on its own. In response, the development team has announced that it’s bringing an “Offline Mode” up on its list of priorities. 

The Nightingale team is prepping for the game’s big launch into Early Access next week. Not only did Inflexion Games move the start up by two days to February 20th, they’re highlighting the recent stress test, what they’ve learned from community feedback, and more.

Not to denigrate either the efforts of either the comms or dev teams, but when a game has been knocking around my consciousness for a while, eventually I just move it it from a mental box marked "in development" to "probably out now, innit" without any input from anyone else. Inkulinati, a turn-based strategy game where you play a medieval artist duking it out with another artist on the pages of an illuminated manuscript, is one such. It's been kicking about on Steam since at least 2019, and in fairness to me it did launch in January last year - it just went into early access. These factors contributed to me being sort of surprised at the reveal of the actual release date for 1.0, which is February 22nd.

Fractured Online is preparing for its big Endgame Changer update, but the team has hit a few snags. In addition to finding a significant dupe exploit that led to server downtime, they also had a failing server that needed repair.

Nexon’s medieval fantasy brawler Warhaven has added a brand new map, The Hangar, along with new game events in the Early Access title’s Pre-Season 2.

In a trailer posted earlier this afternoon, Pocketpair has officially announced the early access release date for their open-world survival game, Palworld,  that people are calling “ Pokemon with guns.”

Pax Dei will enter Early Access this spring, Mainframe Industries announced today. Their cloud-based sandbox also got an Early Access trailer at this morning’s Nvidia presentation, as the game will launch with DLSS 3 support.

Waven , Ankama Games’ deckbuilding RPG is embarking on Chapter 3, Albuera, the conclusion of the Lance Dur season. The new update lets you challenge Lance Dur himself, get a chance to play as the game’s newest hero, the Astramantis, and discover the new islands of Amakna and Albuera. 

Zombie MMO The Day Before has seemingly lost three-quarters of its player base since it release to overwhelmingly bad reviews just two days ago.

The Day Before built up their Early Access launch over the past few weeks. Despite numerous delays and even a legal challenge, the developers at Fntastic persevered, and now that Early Access is live, the veil has dropped and we’re now starting to see exactly what we expected. A game that was released to the public far too early.

Today, My.Games opens up a cross-play PC/console beta for itsthird-person PvPvE extraction shooter, Hawked (stylized as HAWKED ). The game, which is in Early Access on PC, lets you play in both solo and squad modes to shoot, loot, and extract valuable artifacts.

Tomorrow, players will finally be able to check out The Day Before when it opens in Early Access. 

Team 21 Studio has shifted some of its roadmap for Early Access VR MMORPG, Ilysia. The changes come alongside fulfilling promises on transparency from the devs on what they’re working on.

Unforetold: Witchstone is an upcoming CRPG from Spearhead Games. Revealed at the PC Gamng Show today. Previously known as Project Witchstone, the game draws from sandbox features in letting you shape the world around you. 

Reign of Guilds an upcoming medieval fantasy MMORPG by Atlant Games, is rapidly approaching its early access release, set for the first quarter of 2024. The developers announced this as a significant milestone as it maintains that all their updates from here on out are part of the «final stretch» and plans to showcase its readiness for a broader audience with upcoming tests.

Fractured Online has its first significant patch since Early Access relaunched earlier this month, and the team is doing some housekeeping. The patch fixes a number of exploits, patches some bugs, and makes a few balance changes.

VR MMORPG Ilysia has entered Early Access, and Team 21 Studio has a new trailer and some more on what is on the way.

Indie MMO The Wagadu Chronicles is making its early access debut on Steam next month, launching on the platform on December 4th. 

The Ilysia VR team is planning for Early Access sometime this month. 

Fans of Wayfinder have had a rough go of it over the past few days, but it seems to pale in comparison to the problems the development team have encountered with the influx of players after their Early Access launch. As we’ve recently reported, the past few days have been a rollercoaster for both the developers and the players as server stability has been anything but stable, and a vast majority of players have indicated they couldn’t login, stay connected, or reliably quest in Wayfinder. Airship Syndicate, the game's developer, recently released a series of posts addressing the myriad of issues they've faced since the launch on the 17th.

If you’ve been waiting for more information about the time-traveling MMO Into the Echo, there’s some great news for fans ready to delve into the lore of the game! The developers at Etlok Studios have announced that the Early Access for their interactive lore experience, Journey Across Raava, will begin on August 25th. The first round of Early Access keys will be sent out on Wednesday, so participants are encouraged to keep an eye on their emails, and to sign up now if they haven’t yet.

Wayfinder officially entered Early Access on PC and PlayStation yesterday, and the start was met with server issues and instability, which the team attempted to stabilize until they could apply better fixes. Airship Syndicate has acknowledged the issues and has begun outlining what’s next.

As Wayfinder heads into Early Access today after a few delays, the servers will likely see an influx of players, as new Wayfinders join the fight to push back the Gloom. Last weekend press were invited to take part in testing out the game ahead of the Early Access release. We were given access to every character that will be available at the launch of Early Access, alongside each of the craftable weapons, and a smattering of Echoes and Artifacts to choose from to test out the game at “max level”. What transpired after being given max level characters left me both excited and concerned for the Early Access launch. Let’s get into why.