Early Access gives developers some financial security and fans a chance to inform how games shape up. Sometimes, the model produces Game of the Year contenders like Hades and Baldur’s Gate 3. With that in mind, these are the Early Access games to have on your radar through 2024.
Before getting to the list, we must note that it comprises only games that are already in Early Access at the beginning of 2024. We’re just as excited about the likes of Hades II, Nightingale, Palworld, and Life By You as you are, but they weren’t eligible this time around. With that said, let’s dive in!
Inkulinati
I fell in love with Inkulinati as soon as I first saw it — and what’s not to love? It’s a 2D strategy game with an aesthetic that feels like a love letter to the marginalia of medieval texts. Better still, it’s as batty as that inspiration might lead you to hope for. There are dogs with swords, fish with bows, and asses that can stick trumpets up their asses to deliver devastating fart damage.
Inkulinati entered Early Access in February and has so far received four major updates introducing new armies, units, battlefields, mechanics, and more. Now, the development team is on the final stretch to the v1.0 release, which should arrive within the next few months. Unfortunately, the developers have had to set aside plans for online multiplayer, but local multiplayer is available.
Kerbal Space Program 2
It’s not unusual for developers and publishers to try to replicate a successful model. That’s exactly what Intercept Games and Private Division are doing for Kerbal Space Program 2. The game revisits the beloved science-based sandbox of the 2015 original, challenging players to once again build a successful space program. The original Kerbal Space Program grew into quite an expansive game across its Early Access period, and this sequel uses that as the basis for an even deeper, more complex experience.
After almost a year of small updates, the first major content drop landed in December 2023, bringing a new campaign type, progression systems, and physics simulation elements. After a rocky initial reception, the For Science! update has been widely praised, and there’s plenty more to come, with the developers planning colonies, new star systems, interstellar travel, multiplayer, and more.
Lethal Company
Lethal Company is one of those games that proves just how hard it is to predict indie hits. It seemed to come out of nowhere at the end of October and very quickly took over the world. In case you’ve somehow missed it, Lethal Company is a co-op horror experience about grinding through a crappy day job of collecting scrap for a faceless corporation and trying to survive the monstrous dangers of abandoned moons.
According to developer Zeekerss, the game is complete in its fundamentals, with the Early Access period being used to bulk out the amount of content, with the ultimate goal of infinite replayability. It’s expected to remain in Early Access until around April, though that’s subject to change.
Phasmophobia
Phasmophobia is the closest most of us will ever get to being ghost hunters. It’s a co-op horror game where your task is to enter haunted buildings, collect evidence of the spooky goings-on, and get out to sell on your information. The more evidence you have, the more money you receive to be able to upgrade your equipment. The simple gameplay loop is complicated by an different ghost types, each of which respond differently to your attempts, meaning that cooperation often really is key to success.
Phasmophobia has already been in Early Access for years, with the last major update coming in August 2023. The team aims to bring the game to v1.0 in 2024 with the addition of new locations, new equipment, and a console version, alongside much more for players to dig into.
Shadows of Doubt
Shadows of Doubt takes the free-form gameplay design of typical immersive sims to a whole new level, procedurally generating an entire city and hundreds of citizens each time you step into its gloriously lo-fi sci-fi world. The game casts you as a gumshoe charged with solving a murder, but how you go about it is entirely up to you. And, by most accounts, the real fun of the game is in messing with the systems — as is usually the case of immersive sims.
One major update has already introduced new side gigs and building types to the world of Shadows of Doubt. More are planned through 2024, including official mod support and a social class update, with ColePowered Games aiming to get the game to full launch by the year’s end.
Terra Invicta
The Long War mods for XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2 are regarded by many strategy aficionados as absolutely essential. Terra Invicta is the continuation of the work of the team that developed those mods (now known as Pavonis Interactive) and its attempts to create a grand strategy game that’s on a scale quite unlike anything else out there. The game begins on Earth and has you confronting the geopolitics here before tackling the alien threat. That’s where the game expands to include the solar system as part of your strategic playground.
Functionally, the game has been feature-complete since its 2022 launch, with Pavonis mostly focused on balance, relatively minor new features, bug fixes, and AI improvements. That’s set to continue in 2024 as the long road to a full release continues.
The Outlast Trials
Although a spin-off of developer Red Barrels’ well-received single-player horror series Outlast, The Outlast Trials is defiantly its own thing. It takes the premise of the ethically dubious Murkoff Corporation experimenting on people and casts you and up to three other players as the test subjects. In typical Outlast fashion, the locations are populated with enemies who you can’t really fight back against in any meaningful way. You have to avoid them, complete tasks, and make it through the trials alive.
Since entering Early Access, The Outlast Trials has received various balance fixes, as well as new environments, minigames, and storylines, as well as weekly rotations of challenges. The full release on March 5, 2024, will add more trials, cosmetics, and progression items still, with Red Barrels planning post-launch support to further flesh out the experience and keep players coming back.
Wayfinder
After dabbling in the Darksiders and League of Legends universes for the past few years, developer Airship Syndicate took a big leap in launching Wayfinder as an MMO earlier this year. The game takes the comic book aesthetic of the team’s earlier games and applies it to an over-the-shoulder vantage point. Add to that a focus on exploration and some satisfyingly deep RPG mechanics, and you have a very solid foundation.
Day one server issues meant that Wayfinder got off to a rocky start, but the developers have hammered out those problems and knuckled down on the process of updating the game. A huge patch in December overhauled everything from characters to progression systems to events, and more features, including mounts, raids, and a new zone, are set to be added in early 2024 ahead of its full launch when it will switch to a seasonal content update model.
Witchfire
Anyone looking for a slick shooter experience should have Witchfire on their radar. It’s effectively a single-player extraction shooter set in a dark fantasy universe. The developers spent years in pre-production, and that tells in the mesmerizing gameplay loop and the real sense of heft in the weaponry, not to mention the variations that come from adjusted enemy positions with each run and surprising challenges that can make you want to hightail it back to the extraction point post-haste.
The developers aim to provide a major update to Witchfire every two months until it hits full release, which will feature triple the number of maps, more than double the number of enemy types, plus more spells, traps, calamities, worldbuilding, and onboarding changes to make the opening hours more compelling.
Zero Sievert
Zero Sievert is another single-player extraction shooter, but it could hardly be more different from Witchfire. It’s a top-down shooter set in a nuclear exclusion zone where you’re challenged to scavenge for equipment before returning to your base of operations to trade, mod your equipment, and prepare for another run into the dangerous wasteland. Keeping things fresh, each run takes place on a procedurally generated map, though certain locations are hand-crafted to guide the experience and provide a sense of purpose.
Recently passing its one-year anniversary in Early Access, Zero Sievert has grown from its initial launch to include factions, new difficulty settings, difficulty customization options, and plenty more. Still in the cards are controller support, a revamped skill system, and other features.
There are plenty more promising Early Access titles currently in the works, and I’d be remiss not to at least give mention to the beleaguered Jumplight Odyssey and Edge of War or the likes of more high-profile games in the program, like Valheim, Six Days in Fallujah, or Satisfactory. It’s an exciting field, and we’re always keen to see how these games develop and get better over time.
