Is Sons of the Forest Worth It in 2026? Solo and Forest 3

So the question is not whether it's good. It's whether you'll enjoy a game that's done, and how you'll play it, and whether you can buy it before the Scream discount ends (more on that below).

Screenshot: official Sons Of The Forest 1.0 Trailer (Endnight Games on YouTube), 0:43

Is Sons of the Forest worth it? The short answer

What $29.99 gets you

The premise hasn't changed since launch. Steam's pitch: "Sent to find a missing billionaire on a remote island, you find yourself in a cannibal-infested hellscape." You craft, build and survive "alone or with friends", and the store page makes a point of what it doesn't do: "There are no NPC's barking orders at you or giving you missions you don't want to do."

That freedom is the appeal and the warning. The island has cannibals, mutated creatures and seasons that change what food you can find. The story is easy to miss: it's "delivered through set dressing and lore pickups," as u/Nevanada put it to a new buyer in June. Our Sons of the Forest complete guide covers the whole thing, and the map guide shows where the important caves and bunkers are.

Screenshot: official Sons Of The Forest 1.0 Trailer (Endnight Games on YouTube), 0:49

The 1.0 release in February 2024 is what you're buying now. Its patch notes list a "new choice alternate ending" and "5 new cutscenes", among a long list of fixes. Our endings guide walks through each outcome. After that came a run of hotfixes through June 2024, then one more content patch: on January 15, 2025 Endnight added three buildable rafts and a defensive wall system that lets you "just draw out where you want the walls and let Kelvin finish them".

It's also a horror game in the plain sense. Steam's content note warns of "intense violence, blood and gore, as well as horror themes and occasional nudity". Halloween is a fair time to buy it. Dinner is not a great time to play it.

Updates stopped, and Forest 3 is next

This is the part a 2024 review won't tell you. Steam's announcement feed for the game has had nothing new since October 3, 2025, and that post was a Unity engine security fix that only "updated the UnityPlayer.dll file". Before it, the last real changes were the January 2025 raft patch and two hotfixes.

Then, at The Game Awards in December 2025, Endnight showed Forest 3. The studio's own site now lists The Forest, Sons of the Forest and Forest 3, with Forest 3 marked "In development". There's no release date.

What that means for a buyer: Sons of the Forest is unlikely to change much from here. That's fine if you want a finished game. It's less fine if you were hoping for a console port; a February thread on r/SonsOfTheForest was titled "It's 2026! Where's ma goddamn PS5 port, Bruce?" The most cynical reply we read, in a January thread about the game's future, was blunt: "Forest 3 will be as abandoned as this game," wrote u/AdLess4379.

We wouldn't go that far. A finished game with dedicated servers and mods is not abandoned in any way that hurts a new player tonight. Our mods guide covers what the community has added since.

Solo or co-op?

Co-op is where the game's reputation comes from. Asked by a would-be buyer in September, u/Relevant_Yam_6823 put it simply: "IMO both games are best played with friends. Solo is a completely different experience. Even with Kelvin."

Solo is still doable (Kelvin, the companion you can order around, will even finish your defensive walls), and the 1.0 patch gave you the tools to make it gentler. The custom game menu has a "building resistance" setting and a "search parties frequency" setting. In a thread from a slow solo player, u/jolard described exactly that: "I turn off building destructibility, and then build a walled area as soon as possible." Another reply suggested longer custom days for slower progression. If you play alone, start with our building, caves and bunkers guide.

Screenshot: official Sons Of The Forest 1.0 Trailer (Endnight Games on YouTube), 0:58

Playing with friends? Our multiplayer and save guide covers host and guest saves and how to avoid losing co-op progress.

The other limit is replay value. "Once you beat it it becomes boring very quick as there's nothing to progress, no new enemies, nothing very challenging after the story is completed," wrote u/malove0311 in the same thread, while calling it a "fun game" with "great mechanics". Expect a story run and some base-building after, not an endless sandbox.

Can your PC run it?

The specs are higher than the price suggests. Minimum is an Intel i5-8400 or Ryzen 3 3300X, 12 GB of RAM and a GTX 1060 3 GB or RX 570 4 GB. Recommended is an i7-8700K or Ryzen 5 3600X, 16 GB of RAM and a GTX 1080 Ti or RX 5700 XT, with 20 GB of space and an SSD preferred.

Steam Deck owners should look elsewhere: Valve rates the game Unsupported, citing graphics performance. One player in the January thread reported 60 to 80 fps at 1080p on a Ryzen 5600G with an RX 6700 XT, and in their experience the game is "more cpu heavy then gpu".

Buy now or wait for a sale?

It has been this cheap before. In the Steam Autumn Sale that ended October 8 it was 71% off, and on October 23 it was back to $29.99. In Steam Scream Fest V, which began October 26, it's 72% off at $8.39, and Steam's store page says the offer ends November 2. Scream Fest closes at 10 AM PT that day.

If you're reading this before then, buy it now. After that, it's $29.99 again until the next seasonal sale. Steam is the place to buy it: Eneba's global key was listed as sold out when we checked on October 23 and again on October 29.

Who should buy it

• Buy it if you have a co-op group. This is the game at its best. At $8.39 it's an easy call, and even $29.99 split across friends is a cheap night.
• Buy it if you like finished games. The story, endings and building are all there, and they won't be rebalanced under you.
• Solo players: buy it during the sale, wait otherwise. You'll enjoy it more on custom settings. At $8.39 that's a small bet; at $29.99, wait, because it has gone past 70% off in two Steam sales this autumn.
• Skip it if you're on Steam Deck or a low-end laptop. Valve's rating and the minimum specs both point the same way.
• Skip it if you want a live game. Endnight is working on Forest 3. For something newer and stranger this Halloween, see our October Next Fest horror picks.

Our take

We'd buy Sons of the Forest for a co-op group at full price, and at $8.39 we'd buy it for a solo run too. If the Scream discount has ended, wait for a sale if you're playing alone. The reviews have held up (90% positive in the last 30 days is better than the all-time 88%), which says the game still lands with people who buy it now. It just isn't going anywhere. Forest 3 is Endnight's future, and Sons of the Forest is a good, finished island to get lost on until then.

How we checked this

We haven't played Sons of the Forest. On October 23, 2026 we read the Steam store page and its API data for price, release dates, specs and content notes, the review summary on the store page, Valve's Steam Deck rating and the current player count from Steam's API. On October 29 we re-checked the price, reviews and player count through the same Steam API and store page, and Eneba's listing. We read Endnight's Steam announcements from the 1.0 patch to the October 2025 Unity fix, the Endnight Games website and The Game Awards' Forest 3 trailer listing. The past sale price comes from an archived copy of the store page dated October 6. Player quotes come from four r/SonsOfTheForest threads.

We stepped through Endnight's 1.0 trailer at 3-second intervals for the screenshots: the base fight at 0:43, the bow shot at 0:49 and the cave at 0:58.

Related reading

• Sons of the Forest bosses guide
• Sons of the Forest weapons guide
• Sons of the Forest enemies guide
• Steam Scream Fest 2026: dates and deals

References

• Sons Of The Forest on Steam: Endnight Games, Newnight
• v1.0 patch notes: Endnight Games, Steam news
• Rafts, Defensive Wall Blueprints, Fixes, Improvements and more: Endnight Games, Steam news
• Unity security update: Endnight Games, Steam news
• Endnight Games: official studio site
• Forest 3 World Premiere Trailer: The Game Awards on YouTube
• Steam Scream Fest: Steam
• r/SonsOfTheForest: Going to buy Sons of the Forest, what are your thoughts
• Sons Of The Forest 1.0 Trailer: Endnight Games on YouTube