Sons of the Forest’s first patch in 6 months is amazing, adding buildable rafts, a procedural wall system, and fixing over 100 bugs.
The forests of the Sons of the Forest, infested with cannibals, have been quiet lately. After a period of wild popularity in Early Access, it launched last February, with developer Endnight Games providing frequent updates during the first four months of release. However, the studio has remained silent since the June patch, and there have been no further updates, announcements or even tweets in the second half of 2024.
Now everything has changed. Endnight Games released a monster patch on Wednesday, adding several major features to Survival ‘Em Up, making numerous system improvements such as improving weapon aiming and expanding the world’s boundaries, as well as fixing a host of bugs.
The main new addition to Sons of the Forest is the “3 buildable rafts” and a mooring post that prevents them from floating away into the ocean. In its Steam announcement, Endnight didn’t provide much information about the rafts beyond the fact that they exist, but a YouTube video posted by independent channel Sons of the Forest Channel gives a better idea of these makeshift vessels. Players can build small and large rafts that are exposed to the elements, as well as a houseboat with a cozy indoor area. All three rafts can be equipped with useful survival equipment, such as beds and chairs made from human bones, and players navigate them across lakes and oceans using an attached paddle.
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In addition to the rafts, the update adds holding structures for the Knight V glider and electric unicycle, as well as a new procedural system for installing protective walls. According to Endnight, this system allows you to “paint the walls where you want them and let Kelvin finish them.” Kelvin is an affable human interlocutor in the game.
That’s it for brand new stuff, but Endnight also brought a lot of changes to how Sons of the Forest works. Aiming has been improved for many weapons, namely the Crossbow, Compound Bow, Crafted Bow, Shotgun, and Slingshot, and arrow trajectories have been adjusted to “match archery trajectories.” The map is also a little bigger: Endnight expands the world’s boundaries so your freshly crafted rafts have more room to float.
Rounding out the patch is a veritable collection of bug fixes covering everything from sleep icons to glitchy cannibal corpses. Among them there are some particularly funny examples. “Fixed cannibal jaws sometimes looking wrong during death animations” conjures up some fun images, while I like to imagine the conversation surrounding “Fixed French localization of ‘brain bite’.” However, my favorite is “The player will no longer freeze or freeze in the Hell Cave.” Honestly, it’s the least I expected from a hell cave.
You can read the full list of updates here. Perhaps this is a sign that it is finally time for me to return to Sons of the Forest. I played a fair bit of it during Early Access and dug its meticulously tactile crafting system, but never returned to the full version. PCG alum Sarah James made this her personal choice for our 2023 Game of the Year awards, but spent 40 hours on the game’s peaceful, cannibal-free mode.