In case you don't have enough survival games this month, Sons of the Forest leaves early access next week (and it's getting raccoons)

Survival game man giving a thumbs up to a guy
(Image credit: Endnight Games)

I've heard of opening a can of whup-ass, but 2024 has opened up a can of survival-ass. Does that even make sense? Sorry, I've been up late every night this week playing a survival game and I can't really tell.

We're only in February and it's already been a massive year for survival, first with record-setting critter-catcher Palworld and then with smash-hit open world RPG Enshrouded barely a week later. Now we're looking down the barrel at three more survival games all arriving next week: co-op Victorian gaslamp fantasy Nightingale, singleplayer driving survival game Pacific Drive, and the 1.0 launch of last year's tremendous survival hit Sons of the Forest. Yep. All next week.

Here's the Sons of the Forest 1.0 trailer courtesy of IGN:

What's new? Well, raccoons for one, which you can see scurrying in the titular forest and scampering up trees. It also looks like there are several new spooky areas to explore, what appears to be at least one new multi-limbed monster, jump-pads so you can launch hang gliders from the ground, and GPS for gold carts. 

We'll also see more of Timmy, a character from the original (The Forest), as Endnight Games promises to "expand his role in the game and story." Sons of the Forest 1.0 releases on February 22.

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.