After Palworld and Enshrouded, Sons of the Forest keeps a year of survival games going with update 1.0 coming this month

After a year in Steam Early Access, survival game follow-up Sons of the Forest is dropping its 1.0 update on Thursday, February 22.

IGN has the exclusive trailer from developer Endnight Games. The big draw is in the very first shot: cute little racoons. There's something for all the Palworld players out there who now expect their survival games to have cuddly critters in 'em. 

The rest of the trailer is a little harder to distinguish from what's already in the game, though there are some standouts. There are new enemies to hack to pieces, new environments to explore, and seemingly some new gadgets to craft. I'm especially intrigued by that hang glider and launchpad – an impressive bit of engineering for someone trapped in a nightmare forest. Based on this teaser, long-time Sons of the Forest players also speculate that 1.0 will update the ending in a big way, though that's being debated with understandable caution after The Forest's unpredictable finale. 

After one year, Endnight has overshot its initial Early Access prediction by a bit, but to be fair, the game's Steam page only says "we are hoping to be in early access for around 6-8 months, but this could change. We will leave Early Access when we are certain this is the best version of the game possible." It seems that time has finally come, and at the perfect time. Between Palworld and Enshrouded, 2024 has been largely defined by survival games so far. Sons of the Forest is already sitting pretty at some 157,000 85% positive Steam reviews, so here's hoping this update was worth the wait.

PlayStation players are getting in on the survival fun, too: mega-hit vampire survivor V Rising is coming to PS5 this year.