Early Access games done right

[Administrator]

Dungeon of the Endless, Subnautica - quite a lot of Early Access video games start with spaceships in flames, hurtling artfully towards strange planets, bound for tales of peril and survival. Possibly this is just the best way to kick off a narrative that will involve crafting and permadeath, two of this era's greatest loves. Partly, though, it seems a tacit acknowledgement of how so many people feel about Early Access in general - that it is the place where bright promise burns up, where landing sites become graves.
This isn't the case, of course. For every high profile botch, there's the flowering of something strange and special that traditional development models might have accidentally crushed. Forget Godus, then, and forget The Stomping Ground: here are some of the current crop of Early Access games that seem to be delivering on their promises.
You need precision and you need keen strategy to be a spy - at least you need that to be the kind of spy you get in the movies. Klei seems entirely up to the job, taking the deliriously wonderful premise of a turn-based espionage game, and delivering it via regular updates, two a month, generally alternating between small and big patches, so you're never far away from getting something special.
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