Way back in 2014, I saw a trailer for a game that had just entered ‘early access.’ I had never purchased an early-access game before, as it was a relatively new concept at the time for video games. I certainly wasn’t used to purchasing something before it was in a finished state. Nonetheless, the argument of helping an indie developer complete their vision as opposed to letting it silently die unnoticed was a good one to me, and the original trailer was pretty captivating at the time.

The Forest was a survival game. It was a crafting game that promised you the ability to do the Mincraft-like things of chopping down trees, gathering supplies, and then building up your little home base on an island on which your plane crashed. All that would not have been enough for me to want to buy it. If you’ve read any of my reviews of other games, you’d know that crafting mechanics don’t do much for me. If it’s a small part of the gameplay, doesn’t get in the way, and is at least intelligently designed, I’m all for it. When it’s central to the game itself, I get a little apprehensive. So what was it about The Forest that made it enticing enough to buy it before it was finished?

Why I Got it in the First Place

Probably the most important reason why The Forest interested me at all was that it had a horror element to its survival gameplay. I know that all the Minecraft kids say their favorite game has horror in it too in the form of the hissing, exploding green things. I don’t care what they’re called; I’m referring to actual horror. You’re on an island with lots and lots of cannibals who have managed to capture and kill all the other survivors of the plane crash except you and one other (supposedly)—I guess they forgot to come back and finish you off.

So while these cannibals are not skeletons or hissing bomb creatures, they are certainly a threat to you, at all hours of the day. Nighttime is especially dangerous as they are out more often and in large groups, but there is nothing preventing you from running into them during the day. In fact, they often have small villages containing supplies that you’ll need to continue crafting the various objects and tools you’ll need.

More importantly, the horror doesn’t stop with just cannibals. It gets weird Lovecraft creatures later on as the game progresses. Horrible mounds of flesh and limbs with otherworldly screeches leap at you and assault you, likely to destroy much of your fortifications if you don’t prepare properly. While other crafting games let you be safe so long as you lock the door, you are under constant threat in The Forest. It may not be tonight or tomorrow, but one night, they will come for you.

With all that for a premise, I was on board. I liked the idea of survival when you had to legitimately think about where you are setting up your base, and not just for aesthetics. You had to choose a spot that made sense in terms of proximity of resources, as well as defensible terrain. If you built your base on a beach, you were not likely to last long.

What’s more, is that there was an actual end-game goal. Unlike other survival games, which were also somewhat new at the time in terms of popularity, The Forest had the actual goal of finding your son (the other missing person) and escaping the island. You don’t know whether your son is alive or not, but you find clues to his existence in various places. This simple motivation forces you to do more than just build your base all day long. It requires you to venture into the dark and dangerous caves in which many of the monstrosities hide. It was a survival game with a purpose.

Why Did I Stop Playing It Originally?

As I mentioned I got this game back in 2014. It only “released” a finished version in the past year. The Forest in its early days was a rough, rough build. It still looked impressive at the time, but there were lots of bugs and all sorts of issues to deal with. It also was a very difficult game playing solo.

While it supports multiplayer now, at the time, I could only do solo runs and I never seemed to last long before I was knocked out and dragged to a cave. You could blame my poor survival skills, but I’d argue that the first-person combat was a bit too finicky for the time. I’d often run into bugs in which cannibals just never ran out of health, even if I knocked them into a campfire and kept hitting them with my club.

I had a brief bit of fun playing the game with friends in my living room and letting them take a try at surviving a few nights, but it wore off quickly. It didn’t take long for me to feel a bit of buyer’s remorse for paying for a game in such a state. As time went on, the updates to the game were pretty infrequent and I continued to feel like it was a mistake to pay for a game in early access. To this day, I can only name about 3 other games I bought before they released Version 1.0. The Forest is to blame for that a bit.

Why Return?

Wouldn’t you know it? The game actually released a full version, despite my assumptions that it would be like many other early access or Kickstarter games that just fell off the earth with all the money hopeful idiots like myself had contributed. I hadn’t paid any attention to it in my list for years and continued to scroll past it as quickly as possible when looking through my catalog of games on Steam. That was until I saw a few favorite streamers playing it recently for no apparent reason. Upon further investigation, and realizing that the game had actually continued development, I installed it once again and jumped back into The Forest.

It was a massive improvement over my initial impressions, as you might expect. The graphics were improved, the bugs were less harmful, and things seemed to work a bit better, generally. I still found some of the cannibals to be ungodly tanks of defense, but I was able to build a defensible base in a much better location than ever before and survive many nights without losing my life. However, the game is still quite difficult in a solo game, even when playing on a lower difficulty. The lowest difficulty, removes enemies altogether, which is definitely not what I want either.

The combat is just a bit too tough with so many cannibals and only one of you. Even if you manage to pick up some deadly weapons along the way, it doesn’t take long for them to overwhelm you. I know that’s the point, but it doesn’t seem like there is any scaling for whether you’re playing alone or with friends who can revive you if you get knocked down.

Also, in terms of scaling, it would be extremely nice if the construction costs were reduced for solo players as well. When there is only one person to chop down trees, build up defenses, and gather materials, you quickly get tired and run out of time in a day to do anything. It makes the crafting process feel much more tedious than it should. The Forest never marketed itself as a multiplayer-only game, and I tend to think that this game is far scarier if you’re by yourself, but the advantages of being in a group are far too great by comparison.

What Now?

Even though it’s finally in a ‘finished’ state, I’ve come to the conclusion that The Forest isn’t for me. The crafting loop takes a little too long and the combat is not good enough to make it worth exploring the island further. If I were playing the game with friends, I could see both of those complaints diminish somewhat because you’d have more people building cabins and walls in much less time. You’d also be able to revive each other if you get knocked down by the hordes of cannibals and creatures. Since I tend to play my games solo, this is not likely to be my experience.

However, I do enjoy watching people play it and experience it like any other horror game. It’s entertaining seeing people come up with neat ideas on what to build and where to go. Not to mention, I’m a little happier with my purchase from years back because it actually came out and didn’t end up being some scam that was so common at in 2014. I spent enough hours in it to justify my purchase, even if I’m leaving The Forest behind for good. If you have a group of friends interested in a more horror-focused survival game, it might be worth your time.