Surviving The Forest

Have you ever wanted to play Minecraft but found it wasn't terrifying enough? Well look no further because The Forest is just that! Now as I said last week, because of the glory that is the Steam sale I've recently acquired a lot of early access games I've had my eye on, one of which was The Forest.

The Forest is an open world survival horror game where the main baddies are a tribe of savage albino cannibals who would like nothing more than to eat a delicious slice of Long Pig—which while we're on the topic is the nickname I gave the main character. Now the game's story is pretty simple: you're traveling on a plane with what appears to be your son, but due to some unknown circumstances, it rips in half and crashes in the middle of a forest. You wake up in the flaming tail end long enough to see your "son" getting carted off by this weird albino native before you slip back into unconsciousness, you wake up again shortly after and that's where the game begins.

The game itself is a lot of fun and it has a ton of cool mechanics that help your overall survival while not being tedious or boring and without dulling down the gameplay. The Forest has a lot in common with Minecraft and Don't Starve; you spend a lot of your time foraging and collecting supplies to eat, make weapons, and to build your shelter. A lot of the early game is spent collecting things and exploring, while also trying to stay hidden from the packs of albinos who patrol the forest looking for food, which is you. The stealth aspect of the game is really fun too and reminiscent of the Amnesia titles.

In the same vein as Don't Starve and Minecraft, your goal is survival and the game doesn't make it easy on you. Between the weather affecting your stamina and well-being, the constant need to forage and hunt for food while balancing out the creation of your shelter and eventual base, then throw in the occasional cannibal pack attacking you, the game becomes pretty difficult. It also has a similar crafting system to the aforementioned games, utilizing whatever you can find to create makeshift weapons and even explosives.

The natives themselves are really well-designed; they're this perfect mix of creepy and unsettling but at the same time, you're always in such close proximity you learn a lot about them, like how to avoid them, their routines and once you find the village you can see their goings-on. The weird part is once you've fought enough of them you can take their bodies and create these weird burning effigies to ward off others. The reason I find it weird is that you have to chop up the corpses to do so, so do they find you frightening or are they just accepting you as one of their own?

Now as I said before this is an early access game and it's still in its alpha phase, so it's nowhere near the finished product but all that said, the game is still a lot of fun. I find myself constantly establishing goals like building a base and then creating gardens for renewable food, going and setting up traps to catch even more food and so on and so forth and it really instills a sense of accomplishment as you fulfill them.

I'll be the first to admit I'm a little biased when it comes to most survival games as when I was a kid I loved the genre of survival books like Hatchet and Brian's Winter along with shows like Survivorman, so this game was right in my wheelhouse. Saying that, I think this is gonna be a game that's definitely worth looking into but with that being said the game itself in its current state is pretty glitchy. On the other hand, it's being regularly updated and through an interesting ticker on the main screen you'll always be aware of when the newest patch will be ready. If you like the survival horror or just a good open world game, The Forest is worth a look and at the current price, there's no reason not to.