Sons of the Forest: Steam release date and time, price and cost in UK, will it come out on PS5, Xbox and PS4?

Have you ever wanted to be marooned on an island infested with cannibalistic, mutated monsters as you undertake a high-profile mission to rescue a stranded billionaire?

OK, probably not. But what if I told you you could actually do such a thing, without a real risk of being nibbled upon by rabid locals, all through the power of video games? Sound more appealing?

Well, you’re in luck, as brand new survival horror title Sons of the Forest aims to provide you with the experience of just that. It’s just been released on Steam, and has already got plenty of people talking. Here is everything you need to know about it.

What is Sons of the Forest?

Sons of the Forest is an open-world survival horror game played from a first-person perspective, which takes place on a forested island inhabited by cannibals and mutated creatures.

As the player, you’re sent to the remote island on a mission to find a missing billionaire, working either alone or teaming up with friends to reach your goal.

Along the way, you can protect yourself and those you care about by arming yourself with pistols, axes, stun batons, and more, but you’ll also need to gather resources that allow you to craft items that will help you defend yourself from the island’s hostile inhabitants, and build structures and weapons to keep them at bay.

A dynamic weather system and changing seasons means the scarcity of certain items and resources will increase and decrease throughout the year; for instance, while you may be able to catch fresh salmon directly from streams in the spring and summer, you’ll need to gather and store meat for the island’s frigid winters.

The game is fully open-ended, and you decide where to go and what to do next as part of the open-world experience. Sons of the Forest is playable in both single-player and multiplayer with up to eight players, and working with friends, you’ll be able to share resources and cooperate to create defences.

When can I play it?

Sons of the Forest will be released into an Early Access period on 23 February 2023. The game will be made available from 5pm UK time on that date. Early Access means that while a game may be of a playable quality, it is not necessarily feature complete, and may have a number of bugs and issues.

Developers use this time to iron out any issues that players discover, ahead of a ‘full release’ when the game is ready. Endnight Games Ltd - the development studio behind the game - say on the game’s Steam page that they “set out to make the ultimate survival horror simulator,” and will use the Early Access period to gather player feedback and suggestions from the community to help realise their ambitions.

They hope the game’s Early Access status will last around “around 6-8 months”, but do say that this could change as they add “more items... more to build and discover, as well as adding additional game mechanics and lore.”

In its current state, Sons of the Forest is playable in both single-player and multiplayer with up to eight players, and there are “caves to explore, a story to uncover, a brand-new building system, crafting system, a new arsenal of weapons, dynamic weather and seasons, terrifying enemies and lots more.”

Where can I buy it?

The game is only available to PC players as it stands, and is available to purchase and download from its Steam Store page. The game is priced at $30, which equates to £24.90, so expect the final uK cost to be rounded up to £24.99.

Players on other platforms may be hopeful of the survival game coming to their console of choice, but at the time of writing, there has been no official word on if the developers have any such plans in the works.

Games like this have made the jump to consoles in the past though, and especially if the game proves popular on PC, the chances of it being made available to more gamers are more likely to increase.