Which Early Access games are worth playing?

Steam Early Access games have become the norm in PC gaming, and surprisingly, they are one of the best ways for game developers to receive support and feedback from their players on how to improve the game.

These are the 12 best Steam Early Access games worth your time.

12. Kerbal Space Program 2 - February 24, 2023 (PC)

Kerbal Space Program 2 is the most recent Early Access game on this list, and its predecessor is one of the most popular indie games to date.

The game adds a lot of features, but it's mostly about going above and beyond. You can now start building your colonies, which will require their own structures, fuel types, habitations, and even space stations. Once advanced, they can serve as a springboard for interstellar travel.

Choose Kerbal Space Program 2 if you like:

• Building your own space crafts
• Experimenting what works and what does not work
• Science, physics, and basically exploring the space and beyond.

Kerbal Space Program 2 Features:

• Kerbal Space Program 2 introduces colonies. Colonies face physics challenges and need resources to build structures, space stations, habitations, and unique fuel types. Deep space exploration begins when these colonies can build vehicles.
• Interstellar travel is made possible by next-gen tech, colonies, and systematic resource gathering. In Kerbal Space Program 2, interstellar technologies open up new star systems and celestial bodies with unique challenges and hidden treasures.
• Players will have access to next-generation engines, parts, fuel, and more. Players will solve new puzzles and explore space beyond the Kerbolar System with this new tech.

Fun factor score: 80/100

Blasting them to space for a fai--successful launch is always satisfying to witness.

11. Craftopia - September 2020 (PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S)

On September 4, 2020, Craftopia was released on Steam Early Access. It was also made available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.

Craftopia is a new multiplayer open-world survival action game that attempts to combine all of the best survival games. It allows you to tame and catch monsters, farm, and even automate your process if you have the time. Furthermore, you can simply explore dungeons to gather resources and battle monsters, which can help you unlock a skill, and with over 100 skills to choose from, each play style will be unique.

Choose Craftopia if you like:

• A unique survival game in a way that it tries to combine the best gameplay aspects of other survival games
• Farming, automating your resource gathering process, and taming monsters
• Exploring dungeons, create your own character build based on unlocked skills as you play.

Craftopia Features:

• You can choose from over twenty different crops to cultivate. Agricultural machinery also allows for expansive farmland.
• Automate your process to be more efficient in your resource gathering.
• Breed and tame animals and monsters, explore dungeons, and do plenty of side activities.
• Create your own character, unlock skills based on your playstyle, and better yet, play with friends

Fun factor score: 82/100

Exploring dungeons is so much fun!

10. Against The Storm - November 1, 2022 (PC)

Against the Storm is a roguelite-style dark fantasy city-building simulation. You lead a group of survivors that includes humans, beavers, lizards, and harpies, each with their own set of strengths, needs, and desires.

Because there are so many gameplay modifiers and biomes to choose from, each settlement will be unique. Furthermore, there is an unavoidable threat to your settlements: the game's recurring blightstorms, which can affect both the world and your playthrough. You can also connect your built cities to make them trade with one another.

Choose Against The Storm if you like:

• Playing City-builder games
• Roguelite elements that makes each run different from each other
• Manage your cities, connect them to each other, and interact with your different settlements

Against The Storm Features:

• Manage your populations that consist of beavers, lizards, harpies, and humans.
• City builder with roguelite elements, gameplay modifiers, and distinct biomes to enhance the game’s replayability.
• Endlessly build different cities and make them trade each other

Fun factor score: 83/100

Build cities, then connect them to other cities you have to create trade connections

9. Valheim - February 2, 2021 (PC)

Valheim is a fantastic online survival co-op game in which you play as vikings with up to ten of your friends on player-hosted dedicated servers. It's a difficult game because the combat system is stamina-based, which can turn the tides of battle against massive enemies if you're not careful.

Another enjoyable aspect of the game is exploring different biomes to gather resources. There are even bosses in the game, which is incredibly intense and entertaining. Furthermore, you can build your own homes, and it has structural integrity where it can collapse if you build your house incorrectly.

Vikings are also excellent sailors, allowing them to explore the great seas, discover new islands, and encounter sea monsters.

Choose Valheim if you like:

• Playing as vikings
• Explore a vast world, full of monsters, dungeons, and set sail to the seas.
• Build your home like a great carpenter as it has structure integrity, which adds more depth in creating the buildings.

Valheim Features:

• Explore a mysterious world. Explore new worlds with new enemies, resources, and secrets! Be a viking, sail the seas, and fight monsters.
• Build viking longhouses and bases for safety. Detailed building systems allow interior and exterior customization. Upgrade, expand, and defend your base by building tiers.
• Craft weapons, armor, tools, ships, and defenses to survive. Decorate your hearths, sharpen your blades, grow crops and vegetables, cook food, brew meads and potions, and defeat harder bosses to unlock new recipes and blueprints.

Fun factor score: 84/100

Build longhouses and boats, sail away and explore new locations

8. Phasmophobia - September 18, 2020 (PC)

Phasmophobia is a co-op multiplayer survival game. It debuted in September 2020, which is actually the best time because people are still at home at that time.

It is a one-of-a-kind game in which you can finally ghost hunt virtually, and it does not make it any less terrifying when the ghost begins stalking you through the darkened halls of the location of your choice, which can range from small cabins to an abandoned prison. There are numerous gadgets available to make your life easier and capture evidence faster.

Choose Phasmophobia if you like:

• Horror games
• Hunting for ghosts, and get hunted by ghosts
• Co-op games with your friends as it spruces up the ghost hunting

Phasmophobia Features:

• Immerse yourself in ghost hunting with high quality visuals and sounds that will really creep you out. Also, the game encourages you to speak so the ghost can here you.
• With over 20 different ghost types, each has its own unique traits such as interacting only if you are alone.
• Different haunted locations, customize difficulty to tailor on how you want to play the game.

Fun factor score: 85/100

Nothing to see here…or is there?

7. Timberborn - September 15, 2021 (PC)

Timberborn is yet another city-building game, but this time the inhabitants are beavers. You can command one of two factions: Iron Teeth or Folktails. Both have distinct advantages when it comes to establishing colonies.

The game's main challenge is the ever-changing seasons. Seasons change all the time, which means you must stockpile some of the most important resources, such as water, in order to survive the drought. However, the drought aids in the exploration of new areas, especially since you cannot build a dam or bridge at the start of the game.

Other features of the game include a world editor, and each beaver has its own set of characteristics and requirements.

Choose Timberborn if you like:

• Unique city-builder that heavily relies on water to power up your beaver city.
• Beavers as they are cute and cuddly creatures. Watch them work every day and see how they do their every day chores.
• Challenging as seasons are changing every time, and it may affect your beavers significantly if you are not prepared.

Timberborn Features:

• Control the Folktails or Iron Teeth beavers. Each faction has its own buildings and gameplay. Choose your playstyle!
• Prepare for droughts. Stockpile food and maintain fields and forests after rivers dry up. Maintain agricultural land with natural and artificial irrigation.
• Beavers of the future are water engineers. Dams, floodgates, explosive canals, and river redirection can revive the wasteland. Use dynamite carefully.
• Mechanized beavers boost your colony! Power and maintain them to get more efficient workers for any job.

Fun factor score: 87/100

Beavers are just cute creatures! Watch them build dams and multi-floored housing setups.

6. Sons of the Forest - February 24, 2023 (PC)

One of the most anticipated games of 2023 is Sons of the Forest. It is built on the same principles that made The Forest, its predecessor, such a great game.

On a new island, you will face Cannibals and other monstrous creatures. The cannibals are now smarter, so try to survive by finding a safe haven where you can defend yourself and craft items. Explore caves or underground caverns to discover the game's secrets.

Choose Sons of the Forest if you like:

• Playing survival horror game
• Gathering resources, crafting weapons, and explore caverns
• Building your base with ample defenses to fend off attackers

Sons of the Forest Features:

• Freely navigate the world. You choose your actions, location, and survival. No NPCs give you unwanted missions or orders. You order, you decide.
• Enter a world where nowhere is safe and fight mutated creatures, some human-like and others unimaginable. Protect yourself and others with pistols, axes, stun batons, and more.
• Break sticks for fires. Axe windows and floors. Build a seaside cottage or a cabin.
• Pick spring and summer salmon from streams. Gather and store winter meat. As winter approaches, you won't be the only one looking for food on this island.

Fun factor score: 88/100

Smarter cannibals that stalk and hunt you.

5. Baldur’s Gate 3 - October 7, 2020 (PC)

The third installment of the Baldur's Gate series is Baldur's Gate 3. The game allows players to create their own story by creating characters with unique traits, agendas, and perspectives on the Forgotten Realm.

The gameplay is based on the D&D 5e ruleset, and it also employs a turn-based combat system, which allows for team-based initiative, advantage & disadvantage, roll modifiers, combat cameras, expanded environmental interactions, and a new combat fluidity that rewards strategy and foresight.

Choose Baldur’s Gate 3 if you like:

• Playing games where you create your own character
• D&D-type of game, which is always rich in story telling and gameplay
• Turn-based combat system with stories that may change depending your choices

Baldur’s Gate 3 Features:

• Choose from many D&D races and classes or create an origin character with a custom background. Loot, battle, and romance in the Forgotten Realms and beyond. 
• Solo or with up to four friends, choose your companions carefully.
• Baldur's Gate 3's Divinity 4.0 engine gives you unprecedented freedom to explore, experiment, and interact with a world that responds to your choices. As you explore the game’s largest world, a cinematic narrative brings you closer to your characters than ever before.
• The Forgotten Realms are vast, detailed, and diverse, and verticality is essential to exploring. From the Underdark to the glittering rooftops of the Upper City, sneak, dip, shove, climb, and jump. You determine your survival and legacy.

Fun factor score: 89/100

Return to the Forgotten Realms with your greatest party!

4. Satisfactory - March 19, 2019 (PC)

Satisfactory is a simple and satisfying game about building a streamlined factory that can produce your ideal item.

You are tasked as a FICSIT employee with researching new items, leveling up your research, and thus unlocking more possible resources that can be crafted using your machines. It is possible to build massive factories that are fully automated from start to finish, and it is actually very satisfying to watch it work.

The planet is vast and handcrafted, and you can traverse it and discover new resources with any vehicle you want, as long as you have the materials to build it. You can even automate the transport of items from one location to another.

Choose Satisfactory if you like:

• Building and interweaving connections to create an automation in your process
• Exploring an alien planet filled with new resources and monsters
• Factory building where you mine resources, create items from it, so on and so forth.

Satisfactory Features:

• Create massive factories along the vast lands of the planet.
•  Automate and build your ideal factory by utilizing plenty of conveyor belts and even trucks.
• Search the planet for new resources that can be used to create more items, use jump pads to traverse locations easily.
• There are plenty of vehicles such as hypertubes, trains that can be used to transport your items.

Fun factor score: 90/100

Create your own seamless factory!

3. Ready or Not - December 18, 2021 (PC)

Ready or Not is a realistic SWAT FPS game in which you perform a variety of intense operations. It has a variety of missions that you can play solo or with friends, but it is recommended that you play with friends if you want the full SWAT team experience.

Furthermore, the realism in this game is excellent; civilians and enemies are both erratic, which can cause panic if you are not calm. This also adds a sense of replayability because each run may not be identical to the previous one, so you cannot use the same strategy every time.

It is also extremely difficult, to the point where a single error could cost you the entire team and the mission.

Choose Ready or Not if you like:

• Playing as a SWAT officer
• Being tactical in FPS games and checking corners and sweep the areas for enemies
• Challenging games, especially with friends.

Ready or Not Features:

• Realistic gameplay as a SWAT officer, which means unpredictable AI for both civilians and enemies.
• Play solo with AI or with up to 4 of your friends
• Make use of plenty of tactical equipment such as breaching shotgun, battering ram, and more. 

Fun factor score: 92/100

This squad-based game is far too realistic, which is sometimes creepy and terrifying.

2. Project Zomboid - November 8, 2013 (PC)

Project Zomboid is one of the longest Early Access titles on Steam, but for good reason: the game developers are passionate about their work. It's come a long way since its first incarnation, and it shows. For starters, it is the best zombie game available if you want realism in your zombie game.

Nowadays, you can play it with friends, and the game feels very complete, giving the impression that you are in a zombie apocalypse. You must sleep, eat, drink, scavenge supplies, and even craft items. Its gameplay is extremely detailed, as you can even stumble while running or use ropes to escape from a second-story house.

The game has an excellent roadmap, and they intend to add NPCs and animals to make the world more alive in future patches. Furthermore, mods are plentiful, so it is best to experiment with them as well.

Choose Project Zomboid if you like:

• Realistic gameplay for a zombie game.
• Crafting, scavenging, and escaping from hordes of zombies.
• Building your own base to fend off invading zombies.
• Playing with friends or play so, both are great on its own.

Project Zomboid Features:

• Hardcore sandbox survival zombie game as it has focused on realistic survival such as gathering for food, bondaging scratches, and even sleeping.
• Explore a huge map to explore, loot, and find your ideal base.
• A great crafting and learning system that even watching TV is always for learning new skills. Create your own character as well and choose their positive and negative traits.

Fun factor score: 94/100

You can easily get overrun if you are not careful.

1. Farthest Frontier - August 9, 2022 (PC)

Farthest Frontier is a large-scale city-building game. Create your ideal town by guiding your people. Harvest raw materials, make items, farm crops, and catch a variety of fish.

As your town grows, there will be 50 different types of buildings, and they will improve as your town grows. Furthermore, you can improve the efficiency of the production buildings. Examine your villagers' daily activities to determine which areas of town can be improved.

Farthest Frontier also includes randomly generated maps, which add replayability and allow you to develop your economy based on the abundance of resources available on the map. Furthermore, you must prevent diseases from spreading, which can be hazardous to your entire community.

There are also invaders in the game, though you can adjust the difficulty if you prefer a pacifist mode with fewer diseases and no invaders.

Choose Farthest Frontier if you like:

• medieval setting for a city builder
• building towns, upgrading production buildings, and watching your townsfolk do their business.
• randomly-generated maps with customizable gameplay modifiers to make your playthrough unique.

Farthest Frontier Features:

• Gather 14 materials, including wood, stone, clay, metal ores, wild herbs, and honey. Grow 17 food types, including forage, fish, game, and 10 food crops with different traits. Craft 32 items and materials in a multi-tiered economy.
• Build 50 different buildings to turn your town into a bustling city. As your town grows, so will its town center and housing. Upgrade production buildings for efficiency and advanced product production.
• Villagers live and work actively. Watch as villagers transport goods from remote work sites to be processed and made into items. See food delivered to homes, trade posts, and storage. Develop roads, transport wagons, and storage methods to efficiently move goods through your town and prevent spoilage.
• For a more relaxing experience, players can turn off invaders and disease, or max out difficulty to test their town-building skills.

Fun factor score: 97/100

Randomly-generated maps, diseases, invaders, and many more in Farthest Frontier