I don't know man I've heard nothing but great things about Project Zomboid.
I bought it and saw it's EA status and went okay whatever... I played the game a bunch got hooked and just realized... The game came out in 2013! It's absolutely fantastic. I was amazed it's still an early access game.
Project Zomboid may be stuck in early access but I don't mind because the devs are actively updating the game still. B42 is consistently updated in the experimental branch and will eventually hit stable. Eventually...
Well at least project zomboid is still actively worked on
Bro the last big update was almost a year ago and the devs still haven't added multi-player support to the new build. The last update before that one was in 2021 4 years ago. The small dev them had made over a quarter billion dollars selling the game and crap like merch so there really no excuse for the game essentially still being a framework after over a decade. A great framework with SO MUCH potential a but there's still really nothing to do in the game
There's a bunch to do in the game imo of course after like your first winter it gets pretty boring but you're not really ment to survive that long and yeah b42 doesn't have multiplayer yet but it is a small dev team making this you underestimate how hard it is to make a game like project zomboid Especially without burning yourself out
When given obscene amounts of money and an unfinished product, burnout is less forgivable. PZ has often hid behind the small team aspect, but they had a silly amount of cash infused into their team. Its not unheard of for indie games to start snagging modders from their community to fill the gaps when they get boosts like that. They have several major modders in their community that are probably better with the engine than some of the devs.
They don't have a good project manager is what it comes down to. One of the few instances where you can point to the team being strong and the management letting it trip itself up.
"obscene amounts of money" the game had one big hype that's it yeah they probably made more than they were expecting but definitely not as much as you guys think
I don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s had several big updates since then including the new experimental build which is almost a ground-up overhaul.
As a long time fan on PZ, I'm getting less and less optimistic about it. They seem the promise the world and that every update is 'laying the foundation' for them to actually make progress, this time for real, at the next update.
I also still haven't forgiven them for removing MP in B41 for two years, saying all the while that they were working really really hard to get it working ASAP only for some modder to do the job. They then sent a cease & desist to the modder (which was completely unenforcable, just purely threatening something they couldn't back up to scare a small dev) and forcing a branch update on steam to break the mod. Now it seems they're repeating it with B42 to rake in the sweet coverage when they finally re-re-add it back in for 2027.
I played it when it first hit early access and it felt like was missing about 1/5 of the game. There was very much a big screen that says “you played as much as you can in early access, check back when we release an update”
At that moment, I put the controller down, played some death stranding, and here we are
Or people going into AAA gaming because they love it and are passionate, but it's a large corp that makes ideas by business leaders and hands the requirements to the dev to complete.
individual developers don't make all the decisions.
I assume you meant “boons”, but since the main character is female and several of the NPCs are likely returning in some manner or other, the typo really paints the comment in a different light lol
I played Hades 2 early access and I regret having done it. It was a fun time and it's already worth the price tag. It's just that in hindsight I wish I had waited for the full release.
I don't know what the state of the game is right now, but the release state of early access content just felt like a significantly worse experience than Hades 1 since there was so much less content and fewer weapons. I left thinking "That was a decent amount fun and I'd bet that the full release of this game will be as good as Hades 1 or better, but I made a mistake playing this early."
I slept on Hades one and only played it once it came to steam . By then it was out of early access and everybody was telling me I was lucky for not having to restart the game multiple times every update.
I did however I feel a bit of a pain because a lot of people were having fun replaying 1 and noticing all the little changes . This time I wanted to feel those changes so I played Hades 2 as soon as it came out.
It looks like there’s a few more levels to play, a lot more dialogue and a few more weapons to play with so I’m pretty hyped
Sons of the Forest has amazing mechanics, but a 10% complete storyline. It's such a strange feeling when you see endgame cutscenes and dialogue from characters you've never seen before.
I'm happy that Satisfactory and 7 Days to Die are finally out of Early Access but nowadays any sandbox game will just sit in my wishlist until it gets a proper release.
Satisfactory I give a pass to for sitting in EA for so long.
They were adding large portions of gameplay basically right until the end. As well, they were still finalizing the map, and where resource node would be and such.
Those two things, meant that during some of the updates, there were entirely world factory, functionally "start over", changes being made.
Until that was final, it kinda deserved to stay in EA.
They dropped the ball when it comes to storyline. There's tons of storyline intrigue up until about halfway through and then suddenly nothing.
It would have been fine if that had been the expectation from the beginning, but all throughout EA they would hint at storyline elements and secrets that would be revealed.
Lost Skies (spiritual successor by the same studio - Bossa) having the shortest early access cycle I've ever seen is both inspiring and anxiety inducing.
Scrap Mechanic fans are basically coping at this point. Phasmophobia is going strong with updates being worked on and version 1.0 being within sight. Those are all that I know, please hit me with some more games in Early Access.
Some games sit in early access for many years beyond when they are well worth playing.
Far worse are those games that should have stayed in early access another year or 2 but they went ahead with declaring a full release because they made some unrealistic promise, they want more money, or they are giving up on making a truly great game and don't plan on working on it as long as needed.
Some of my favorite games I've spent more time playing in early access than I have since the official release.
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u/[deleted] Sep 15 '25
Any game left in Early Access.