Good "Early Access"

[josemlopes]

Full Mojo Rampage

I dont even know if its in Early Access anymore since I havent played it for a while but even when it was it had all the major gameplay mechanics working and finished, no bugs and glitches. The artstyle was very competent and good. Basicly the Early Access was because it still wasnt what they would want to call "the full game", they wanted a lot more enemy variety, more weapons, more areas and bosses. But what it had made a very complete game already, they just wanted more in it so they didnt labelled as finished with future free DLC.

 

[Xeorm]

Factorio is a great game I'd recommend to anyone. You're an advance scout on a planet inhabited by aliens that love to kill you. Likely because you pollute their world in your efforts to repel them, but that's just details.

Main focus of the game is building factories and the production lines to get ever-better toys. There's enemies that constantly spawn and come in waves to kill you, which you fight off with a mix of turrets and personal weaponry. Lots of fun!

 

[Scootinfroodie]

I've been pretty happy with Reflex so far. It's a pretty good successor to the Quake 3 CPMA mod, and it comes with an in-game level editor. It's pre-alpha but what they have so far is solid. The devs are active on the forum. IRC and subreddit and have been pretty receptive to community feedback. We'll see if that continues throughout development though

 

[bluepotatosack]

Clockwork Empires.

A Dwarf Fortress inspired city building game in a Lovecraftian/Steampunk setting. You're colonists may turn to the occult or cannibalism or become axe murderers (and why does this spell checker not recognize "axe"?). It's still very early, but the developers are in constant communication with the community and are making frequent updates.

Spoiler: Trailers!

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

Darkout.

A game about surviving on a very hostile planet where even darkness is out to get you.
It's another Terraria-like game though much better graphics. I'm not very good at explaining things so go check out their site.

They had a pretty good start up to v.1.2.9 (I think) when they tried adding multiplayer to it.
The wait seemed endless and not much happening in terms of updates or communications.
I think they've gotten that down and on track now though.
They listen to player feedback and suggestions very wholeheartedly and seem like very nice people overall.

 

[sageoftruth]

My question for everyone here is, even if these games are pretty good, does it still justify making the gamble of buying them early access before you know that they're actually pretty good? If you waited until they were finished, the games would still be there, finished and reviewed. No risk required.

Nonetheless, it is good of you to leave these posts, so people can make informed purchases instead of blind gambles.

 

[bluepotatosack]

It really does come down to trust in the developers. Gaslamp games handled Dungeons of Dredmor very well and I trust them to do the same with Clockwork Empires. So far that trust has not been misplaced.

 

[Windcaler]

My question for everyone here is, even if these games are pretty good, does it still justify making the gamble of buying them early access before you know that they're actually pretty good? If you waited until they were finished, the games would still be there, finished and reviewed. No risk required.

Nonetheless, it is good of you to leave these posts, so people can make informed purchases instead of blind gambles.

The answer to that is yes or no on a case by case basis. Kerbal space program in its current form is basicly a full game already and worth a purchase IMO. However when blackguards was in early access it didnt seem like a worthwhile purchase to me.

However there are some cases where companies like double fine have abused the early access program and abandoned unfinished projects. It seems to me that youre best judgement call is to take the game as is and decide whether that, not its future potential, is worth the price.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Space Engineers

Like Minecraft in space is probably the easiest way to put it. However, that would be doing it a pretty big injustice in my opinion. Building your ships and then smashing them into others is quite the spectacle and it's fun to try and come up with optimal designs or recreate famous ships from sci-fi.

 

[Scootinfroodie]

My question for everyone here is, even if these games are pretty good, does it still justify making the gamble of buying them early access before you know that they're actually pretty good? If you waited until they were finished, the games would still be there, finished and reviewed. No risk required.

Nonetheless, it is good of you to leave these posts, so people can make informed purchases instead of blind gambles.

In my case, Reflex was ~10 bucks. There's now a 4 pack if that's slightly too rich for someone's blood. The game as it stands right now, to me personally, is worth easily double that, and indeed I've spend 30+ hours on it. If somehow the game stopped being developed, I could still have a lot of fun with what I have currently (especially since it's LAN friendly and I can create my own content)

 

[Laughing Man]

I appreciate that at least two of their monthly updates have been bugfix-fests, so they're definitely dedicating themselves to keeping it playable; but on the other hand, seeing as we're at Alpha 25, I'm curious as to what their final brief is actually going to look like. Completely sandbox, or with a career mode, too? I'm hoping that this is what's getting worked on at the moment, everything else (bar item functionality or functionality of certain furniture, and the horrible performance in utility view) seems complete.

I believe their is a plan to have a story or career mode of sort in the final version of the game as well as a full sandbox mode. To be honest I am happy with the game as it is and love the fact that every month a whole new load of content appears. Their are still a few things that could be added or tweaked to make the game better. The last bug bash video hinted at multi levelled interactions in objects. At the moment the game works on singular needs and reward, i.e prison is hunger ergo needs food so goes and gets food when the schedule allows him. If food is there he eats it and hunger need goes away, if food isn't there then prisoner gets angry. It's simple and works but the example they gave was a basket ball court style yard, where you would need a social variable, a pre defined number of prisoners, the basket ball and court itself and the result of playing the game would have effects on mutiple prisoner needs, i.e social need, exercise need etc.

Oh and the last bugbash update also significantly improved the performance in utility view (at least it did for me)

So yeah I recommend Prison Architect as well as KSP, my god the amount of time I have sunk in to KSP, I am lead to believe they are nearing Beta but the game needs to get a few issues sorted

1). Multi core support (though I am lead to believe this a limitation of the Unity Engine that they are using
2). 64bit needs seriously improved, they even include a splash at boot that says it is unstable and liable to crash even without mods but you NEED 64 bit to run some of the high texture mods
3). Multi part performance, when you get above 600 or 700 odd parts on a craft the game starts to seriously chug. Haven't tried a 1000 part craft on my new i5 4690k but on my old i5 750 you would be looking at 4fps in Kerbin atmo