I just have Steam set up to hide early access games. There’s not much reason to play early access when there are so many great and fully complete games you can play in the meantime.
My only real counter to that is Project Zomboid. It’s a complete game. It’s in EA due to them wanting to add many more gameplay systems to the existing complete sandbox. They have a roadmap somewhere. They don’t release major updates without multiple ones being added.
Last major update (41, a few years ago) was drivable cars (and all the spawning systems, loot, and map changes to make them fully fleshed out) and multiplayer. I’m sure there was more, but those were the standout things.
The new major update (42, available through a public opt-in beta branch right now) is a complete overhaul to gunplay, liquid management/mixing, crafting systems, lighting engine, and the addition of NPC animals with a full husbandry system. And that’s only the highlights. It will stay in beta as they get better data for balancing the new features and the absurdly increased player count surfaces bugs they didn’t find through internal testing. Once it’s balanced and stable (maybe a year), they’ll push this update to the main branch where it will continue to get minor bug fixes as things crop up (usually bugs surfaced by the modding community by the time it hits stable).
Then they’ll keep crunching away on work on human NPCs and simulating story stuff with loot generation, which I believe will be the next major update in a few years.
Each intermediate release is a complete game, it just doesn’t have the full set of features on the roadmap. It still is the best zombie survival sim on the market as is.
My favorite game ever is noita and i played it for almost 3 years of early access plus the 4 years since release. I’m really happy i got to see this great game be worked on. Tbf i think the bulk of the game was pretty much fleshed out already and the devs just made things better and added new stuff.
I honestly stopped trying to get anything done a long time ago and just having fun with whatever i find. Every time i try to get a god run going i get frustrated and i end up dying to a single pixel of poly.
There’s a few indie shooters I’ve played that are officially EA, but have hours of gameplay in their first play though and are very replayable. Selaco is an absolute joy with 9 hours on the main campaign and 22 hours for 100%. Officially EA with only the first episode out.
I just have Steam set up to hide early access games. There’s not much reason to play early access when there are so many great and fully complete games you can play in the meantime.
My only real counter to that is Project Zomboid. It’s a complete game. It’s in EA due to them wanting to add many more gameplay systems to the existing complete sandbox. They have a roadmap somewhere. They don’t release major updates without multiple ones being added.
Last major update (41, a few years ago) was drivable cars (and all the spawning systems, loot, and map changes to make them fully fleshed out) and multiplayer. I’m sure there was more, but those were the standout things.
The new major update (42, available through a public opt-in beta branch right now) is a complete overhaul to gunplay, liquid management/mixing, crafting systems, lighting engine, and the addition of NPC animals with a full husbandry system. And that’s only the highlights. It will stay in beta as they get better data for balancing the new features and the absurdly increased player count surfaces bugs they didn’t find through internal testing. Once it’s balanced and stable (maybe a year), they’ll push this update to the main branch where it will continue to get minor bug fixes as things crop up (usually bugs surfaced by the modding community by the time it hits stable).
Then they’ll keep crunching away on work on human NPCs and simulating story stuff with loot generation, which I believe will be the next major update in a few years.
Each intermediate release is a complete game, it just doesn’t have the full set of features on the roadmap. It still is the best zombie survival sim on the market as is.
But it is absolutely a unicorn of early access.
My favorite game ever is noita and i played it for almost 3 years of early access plus the 4 years since release. I’m really happy i got to see this great game be worked on. Tbf i think the bulk of the game was pretty much fleshed out already and the devs just made things better and added new stuff.
Omg I love Noita! It’s so hard, but I’ve gotten to the point that 1 in 5 rounds can end up a god run. I finally got my 33 orb Kolmi!
I honestly stopped trying to get anything done a long time ago and just having fun with whatever i find. Every time i try to get a god run going i get frustrated and i end up dying to a single pixel of poly.
There’s a few indie shooters I’ve played that are officially EA, but have hours of gameplay in their first play though and are very replayable. Selaco is an absolute joy with 9 hours on the main campaign and 22 hours for 100%. Officially EA with only the first episode out.