The Forest

About The Forest

The Forest dropped on April 30, 2018, as a single-player or co-op survival horror title from Endnight Games Ltd. You play as Eric Leblanc after surviving a plane crash on a remote peninsula where your son gets taken by cannibalistic mutants. This indie simulator lets you explore the surface and deep underground caves across PC, PS4, and SteamVR. The core loop involves scavenging for food, building shelters to survive the night, and hunting down enemies while piecing together a dark mystery about an abandoned lab and a strange artifact. It is a tense first-person experience that balances quiet resource gathering with frantic combat against feral creatures in a hostile environment.

Gameplay

Your day starts by checking your inventory for wood and stone to construct bases or simple walls. You spend hours chopping trees, crafting axes, and setting traps around your camp before nightfall. When darkness hits, you must defend your shelter from waves of mutants using spears, bows, or firearms found in the caves. The game tracks hunger and thirst, forcing you to hunt animals or cook meat regularly. Exploring underground tunnels reveals complex puzzles involving switches and levers that unlock new areas or reveal story details about the artifact. Multiplayer lets a friend join your struggle, allowing you to split tasks like one person building while the other scouts for resources.

What Players Think

Critics and players rate this title at 77.8 out of 100 on IGDB based on 364 reviews. Average completion times vary wildly because many people get stuck in the caves or lose their saves to mutant attacks. The community mood is split, with four votes for cozy vibes and four for creepy tension, while two players note the dark atmosphere. Cooperative play remains a key feature since working together helps manage the threat level. You can earn 45 achievements by completing specific challenges like killing certain boss enemies or finishing the story. Current market data shows prices as low as $0.81 on Green Man Gaming, making it a very accessible purchase for most people right now.

PlayPile's Take

This game is worth your time if you enjoy resource management and fear of the dark. The price point near eighty-one cents makes it a no-brainer even if you only play the first few hours. You will spend significant time building structures and managing inventory rather than just shooting enemies. The ending involving the talk show twist leaves a lingering sense of unease. Players who dislike long loading screens or complex crafting menus might find the early game tedious. Grab it for the atmosphere and the challenge of surviving against overwhelming odds without spending much money.

Storyline

The game begins with the player Eric Leblanc riding in an airplane with his son Timmy Leblanc when the plane mysteriously crashes on a remote island. The player and his son manage to survive the crash, but the player watches helplessly as his son is kidnapped by a man in red war paint. In addition to trying to survive in the wild and fending off hostile wildlife and feral, cannibalistic mutants, the player searches the peninsula for his son. The forest surface leaves clues to help the player puzzle out the story, but the majority of the plot takes place in the caves that riddle the underside of the peninsula. Eventually, the player discovers an abandoned underground lab complex that was studying an artifact capable of bringing the dead back to life, but requires the sacrifice of a child. The player discovers that the kidnapper intended to sacrifice the player's son in order to revive his daughter. However, the player discovers that the daughter had mutated into an aggressive, cannibalistic monster, similar to the other mutants that roam the peninsula. The player confronts the child, who seizes and mutates further before attacking him, leading to the daughter's death. The player then attempts to use the daughter's body to revive his son, but the process is a failure, since a live sacrifice is needed. The player explores the lab further and discovers a second artifact that functions as a type of EMP device capable of bringing down nearby planes, implying that it is the cause of his own plane crash. The player then uses the artifact to cause another plane to crash, intending to find a sacrifice to revive his son. One year later, the player and his son have apparently been rescued, and they are invited onto a talk show to promote a book that the player wrote, chronicling his experiences. However, during the show, the player's son collapses and begins to have a seizure, implying he is undergoing the same mutation that the daughter had.