Best Early Access Games on Steam
In-development games sold while features, balance, and content continue to evolve.
Browse all Early Access →
1Phasmophobia - Phasmophobia is a 4 player online co-op psychological horror. Paranormal activity is on the rise and it’s up to you and your team to use all the ghost-hunting equipment at your disposal in order to gather as much evidence as you can.
Sep 18, 2020
In this game, you can…
- use your real voice to taunt a ghost, and it can hunt you for what you say.
- ask a ghost questions, hear it answer "close" and "die," then get strangled while your friends photograph the body for cash.
- trigger a cursed item that starts a deadly round of hide-and-seek while you listen from a hiding spot.
- insult a ghost inside the house, and it can instantly lock the door and start hunting your teammate.
- sit in the truck watching cameras and sensors while your friends investigate inside and try not to get hunted.
- take a photo of a ghost standing over a collapsing teammate, and sell that death moment as mission-paying evidence.
- watch a ghost ignore everyone else during a hunt, beeline to the basement to stare at you, then walk away.
2The Forest - As the lone survivor of a passenger jet crash, you find yourself in a mysterious forest battling to stay alive against a society of cannibalistic mutants. Build, explore, survive in this terrifying first person survival horror simulator.
Apr 30, 2018
In this game, you can…
- get knocked out, dragged through the forest, and wake up trapped in a cave you have to escape.
- watch cannibals scout your camp, retreat to call reinforcements, and come back as a coordinated raiding party.
- fight off a base siege where mutants smash your walls and one rips up a whole tree to use as a weapon.
- wake up after a plane crash and hunt for your kidnapped son by following clues through caves, boats, and survivor camps.
- build treehouses, cliff forts, and spiked walls, then have a falling tree smash your own structure to pieces.
- craft gear by gluing teeth to your axe, wearing bones as armor, and turning skulls and bodies into lamps and defenses.
- creep through pitch-black caves, squeeze through flooded passages, and surface missing gear with enemies still hunting you.
- turn the crash site into a long-term fortress, or build rafts and dock houses into a whole river-and-coast base network.
3Valheim - A brutal exploration and survival game for 1-10 players, set in a procedurally-generated purgatory inspired by viking culture. Battle, build, and conquer your way to a saga worthy of Odin’s patronage!
Feb 2, 2021
In this game, you can…
- build a house with a fireplace and die if you forget ventilation.
- drag a cart full of ore across the wilderness, then end up building roads and supply routes to get it home.
- ship ore and even livestock across islands by building docks and running maritime trade routes.
- hunt sea serpents on purpose at night for food.
- watch enemies from different regions start fighting each other while you just stand back.
- build with structural support so big halls and towers need real beams, not just stacked walls.
- sail in a night storm, guide a friend's ship to port by torchlight, then sprint to the walls when a raid warning hits.
- tear down a bad build and get all the materials back, so you can rebuild freely.
4Lethal Company - A co-op horror about scavenging at abandoned moons to sell scrap to the Company.
Oct 23, 2023
In this game, you can…
- sell every last scrap, then haul a teammate's body to the counter for the final few credits to hit quota.
- stay on the ship as mission control, use the terminal to open doors and spot threats, and talk your team back alive through the maze.
- listen to your friend's voice get muffled and cut off mid-sentence as a monster grabs them in proximity chat.
- hear a teammate dying over the radio while you keep scavenging, and the person guiding you keeps talking after they're already dead.
- open a trapped teleporter room, watch one rescue turn into a chain of monster attacks, and still have to find a way out.
- step into a mineshaft because your friends told you to, then they later find you cocooned and hanging from the ceiling.
- watch a teammate calmly warn you about a landmine, then immediately scream about a spider and get blown up mid-run.
- buy gear like jetpacks, ladders, and stun grenades, then accidentally turn them into hazards that kill your own crew.
5Project Zomboid - Project Zomboid is the ultimate in zombie survival. Alone or in MP: you loot, build, craft, fight, farm and fish in a struggle to survive. A hardcore RPG skillset, a vast map, massively customisable sandbox and a cute tutorial raccoon await the unwary. So how will you die? All it takes is a bite..
Nov 8, 2013
In this game, you can…
- look down from a skyscraper roof at thousands of zombies swarming below, then get trapped inside and survive by rationing food.
- trade Sonic fan fiction for gasoline in multiplayer, then crash the car and die four minutes later.
- kill your bitten friend after he turns into a zombie, using a frying pan on the side of a highway.
- load a car with supplies, drive out for a VHS-store run, and find a pristine video store packed with tapes after clearing the street.
- press one wrong key, accidentally shout, and pull the whole neighborhood into your base like a siren.
- turn a lumber mill into a fortified co-op settlement with roof crops and water projects, then lose it to a kitchen fire and a converging horde.
- loot a gun store, get chased deeper into the city by a helicopter, fight from a rooftop until the door breaks, then jump off and keep going on a shattered leg.
- level skills by doing physical work like dismantling furniture and electronics, stripping car parts, and even practicing first aid by bandaging your own injuries.
6R.E.P.O. - An online co-op horror game with up to 6 players. Locate valuable, fully physics-based objects and handle them with care as you retrieve and extract to satisfy your creator's desires.
Feb 26, 2025
In this game, you can…
- get dumped into a boxing arena when the mission fails and beat your friends to crown a winner.
- run over a teammate with the cart, pick up their body, and use it to kill a monster.
- watch a monster sprint up, snatch a 20k statue you can barely lift, and hurl it back hard enough to wipe the team.
- revive teammates mid-round by cashing out their head, or dragging them back to the truck for a revive.
- haul fragile, fully physics-based treasure like pianos and antique vases that can smash, drop, or lose value on the way out.
- pick up crouching teammates, throw them onto shelves, and turn their bodies into weapons or hazards.
- sneak past monsters while dragging sofa-sized loot, then get yanked down a hallway by a ghost as someone drops into an elevator shaft.
- hide under furniture and whisper in proximity voice chat while monsters search, with the dead and living stuck in separate comms.
7BeamNG.drive - A dynamic soft-body physics vehicle simulator capable of doing just about anything.
May 29, 2015
In this game, you can…
- change gravity settings and watch the same truck drive completely differently under moon or Jupiter gravity.
- join multiplayer races and chases, and keep driving even with half your truck bent under itself.
- wrap a car around itself by slamming it into a fence over and over.
- spawn traffic, rear-end someone, and get launched airborne for five seconds in the wreck.
- break your suspension cutting a rally corner, then limp the rest of the stage to the finish.
- build absurd custom vehicles, like a JATO rocket semi, then immediately stress-test them out in the world.
- take on deliveries, bus routes, police chases, and truck jobs where normal tasks turn dramatic because the physics won't fake it.
- hit traffic at highway speed, then crash into a jam in slow motion and watch the pileup deform in detail.
8Raft - Raft™ throws you and your friends into an epic oceanic adventure! Alone or together, players battle to survive a perilous voyage across a vast sea! Gather debris, scavenge reefs and build your own floating home, but be wary of the man-eating sharks!
Jun 20, 2022
In this game, you can…
- drop anchor at an island, jump off to loot it, and realize your raft can drift away if you didn't secure it first.
- use antennas and a receiver to follow radio coordinates to story locations packed with puzzles and notes explaining why the world flooded.
- play co-op where one person builds, another cooks, and you can carry unconscious teammates back to bed like it's normal.
- start on a 2x2 raft with a plastic hook.
- yank floating trash with a hook, then turn it into a purifier, grill, sail, bed, and research table as your raft becomes a real ship.
- reinforce your raft so a shark stops tearing off platforms, turning it from a threat into background noise.
- dive underwater to scavenge reefs for ore and rare materials, then surface to unlock higher-tier crafting.
- build nets that automatically catch drifting debris, so the ocean feeds you a constant stream of materials.
9Risk of Rain 2 - Escape a chaotic alien planet by fighting through hordes of frenzied monsters – with your friends, or on your own. Combine loot in surprising ways and master each character until you become the havoc you feared upon your first crash landing.
Aug 11, 2020
In this game, you can…
- turn a minigun build so toxic that a teleporter spawns four bosses, one dies in seconds, and the chain explosions wipe the entire map.
- reach a point where normal enemies are bosses, and teleporter bosses stop spawning because everything on the map already counts as a boss.
- interrupt a wedding, kill the bride and groom, steal their rings, and then use those rings to kill more enemies.
- activate a giant teleporter, hold its circle against nonstop spawns, and watch a boss erupt before you're allowed to leave.
- stack damage boosts, crit bursts, and on-hit effects until one kill triggers explosions, lightning, fireworks, and orbital lasers across the whole area.
- loop a run until the game starts spawning hundreds of enemies that immediately die, flooding the screen with coins, missiles, and chained effects.
- feed a boss-killing item to equipment drones and grind boss loot until the payoff becomes "Ahoy!" over and over.
- go from a crash survivor to firing hundreds of homing missiles and calling orbital bombardments within ten minutes.
- fight on the moon to end a run, or keep looping until even a godlike build can still collapse during the final test.
10Schedule I - From small-time dope pusher to kingpin - manufacture and distribute a range of drugs throughout the grungy city of Hyland Point. Expand your empire with properties, businesses, employees and more.
Mar 24, 2025
In this game, you can…
- mix drugs with other ingredients to create effects like super jump, speed boosts, or turning users into ticking time bombs.
- pickpocket the whole city by day, then go gambling at night as part of the same routine.
- buy a Golden Skateboard, break in through a shack window, knock a guy out, then pickpocket him to get your money back.
- build a drug empire from nothing, scaling into properties, employees, dealers, laundering, and automated production across Hyland Point.
- run the entire operation hands-on: water and trim plants, mix ingredients, bag and package product, test purity, then coordinate in-person handoffs.
- discover weird recipes and lace your product with absurd additives that radically change what it does to people.
- stack boxes and barrels to climb over fences and slip past police patrols during curfew.
- set up dealers to unload lower-quality batches while you keep experimenting with new mixes, keeping money flowing while you expand.
