The Forest Preview

You gaze out of the window at the clouds passing by. Your son is sleeping in the seat next to you, his hand resting on your arm. Your attention is briefly caught by the small TV screen built into the chair in front, broadcasting the airline’s signature brand of light, no substance, in-flight entertainment.

A sudden jar, a pitched whine, the plane lurches forward. Your son is awake now, wide-eyed in terror. His fingernails dig into your arm as he grips you tight in panic. A great tearing sound, the front half of the plane is torn away. You see trees, coming up fast. Your son hits his head. His grip loosens. He falls forward. The ground is coming up fast. One last lurch. Blackness...

You open your eyes. Everything is blurred, you can't move. You see a figure crouching over the prone body of your son. Monstrous, tribal, fierce. He gathers him in his arms and walks from the shell of the plane. You struggle to rise. How long passes? A second? A minute? More? You stand and stagger from the wreckage. A body lies at the torn entrance, an emergency axe from the plane buried in its chest. You scan in all directions, frantic. Where is the man you saw? Where are the rest of the passengers? Where is your son?!

This is The Forest, a first-person survival horror from four-man outfit, Endnight Games. Having crashed down on a mysterious island, you find yourself stranded and alone. In order to survive, you'll need to build shelter to rest and protect yourself from the elements, hunt and forage for food and supplies, and gather materials to make fire to protect against the cold.

Oh, and did we mention that you'll be sharing the island with a tribe of vicious, cannibalistic mutants? Yeah, there's that too, just in case you thought it was going to be easy.

First impressions mean a lot and the opening scene in The Forest certainly leaves its mark. Equally so when leaving the plane and you see the world around you. Suitcases and debris lie scattered around you, offering your first chance to scavenge some suppliers. Beyond the crash site... well, it depends in which of the randomly selected locations you've landed.

You'll certainly see the huge forest that blankets the island, perhaps a stretch of beach. If you're really lucky you'll see some rabbits, lizards or berry bushes; potential sources of food. If you are unlucky, you might find yourself surrounded by terrifying tribal effigies constructed from skulls and severed limbs. That means you are in tribe territory, and you don't want to hang around.

Whatever it is you see when you step from that wreck, you'll surely be impressed knowing that this world was built by just four people.

Surviving, when it comes down to it, means building. Shelters, fires, traps and more are available for construction. By accessing your handy in-game survival guide you can select blueprints for various types of construction. These will then appear as an outline at the point of placement, and you can begin the construction process by gathering the prerequisite materials and carrying them to the building site.

Construction materials primarily consist of sticks, rocks and logs. There are other materials, such as leaves, feathers and even body parts, but those three will be your mainstays. Rocks and sticks are generally found lying around, waiting to be scavenged, while logs are obtained by cutting down trees: a satisfying experience thanks to nice chopping action and graphics.

It’s all very well and it hints at something that could be great down the line, but as it stands The Forest really does opitimise the 'early' in Steam’s Early Access program. This is software that is barely into alpha, and as such there are bugs aplenty and lots of gaps in the content.

The area of the island available is fairly small, and the amount of constructions available for crafting is similarly limited: three types of shelter, three fires, etc. It generally does not take a great deal of time to see the majority of what is on offer at this stage.

Bugs are apparent, and while not much beyond missing textures affected our playthrough there are reports on the Steam forums of invincible enemies, exploding corpses, disappearing inventories and lost saves. Expected from an alpha, certainly, but something to be aware of if considering a purchase at this early stage.

Enemy AI behaviour is mixed. In confrontations, members of the tribe are very 'human' in their behaviour. Sometimes they will attack, sometimes they will slowly stalk you. If they are losing an engagement, or they are not sure if they can take you, they may run away for reinforcements before returning to try and track you down.

While their behaviour during an encounter is to be admired, there is something distinctly inhuman about their ability to find you. In my own game I came across a hidden gully, following this led to a cliffside, and a tiny path led onto a tiny, enclosed beach below. So remote was this location, that even the game's own textures couldn't find it.

Setting up a small makeshift shelter was my first task, and I found a small gap in the body of the cliff rock in which to build it. Thanks to the location of the shelter, there was literally nowhere that it could be seen from, except from the small patch of beach directly in front of it. Despite this, after sleeping to recover some spent energy, I awoke to find a cannibal on the beach, facing out into the ocean.

This happened two more times in the space of my short playthrough, and took away from some of the immersion. I took great pains to choose a secluded spot away from prying eyes, and it would appear that, regardless of this, the game simply spawned enemies right next to me. Hopefully something to fix in later incarnations, as right now this is something of a mood killer.

The tribe members are also inhumanly tough, taking somewhere in the region of 7-8 good solid swipes of the axe to take down. This can make early encounters difficult and frustrating, especially if encountering several individuals at one with little chance to escape.

The Forest has a lot of potential to be a lead player in the rapidly expanding roster of survival horror games appearing in Steam's Early Access program. Features are thin on the ground at the moment, and bugs still plague the gameplay, but as the game evolves into beta testing and beyond, we'll see what Endnight Games can build on top of what seems like a fairly solid foundation.