SUBNAUTICA EARLY ACCESS WARNING FREE

Except it's not boring old gumbo - it's a Vlambeer shooter, and it's amazing. It's like watching a gumbo bubbling away on the stove, basically, while the cook throws in anything and everything. Best of all, Vlambeer's using this approach to take real risks, with experimental character classes that turn the rules on their heads. This is an action roguelike - a perfect candidate for a game that will get better as more pieces get added - and the developer's turned regular updates into something that approaches appointment television, with livestreams and lots of chatter between designers and players. Nuclear ThroneР”Р‡ew games capture all that's great about Early Access development quite as well as Nuclear Throne, Vlambeer's fidgety tribute to gore and camera shake and crossbow bolts through the head.

SUBNAUTICA EARLY ACCESS WARNING FREE

Don't Starve's also back in Early Access, incidentally, with a new multiplayer build that will become free to existing owners upon completion. Tellingly, Klei's done this kind of development before, with the gloriously cruel Don't Starve. Along the way, though, we've already got new enemies, new playable agents, and loads of balance changes. Invisible, Inc is currently building to its climactic patches, which will deliver a proper story arc and a suitable final mission. 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.

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.

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. For every high profile botch, there's the flowering of something strange and special that traditional development models might have accidentally crushed. 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. 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. 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.

Subnautica early access warning