Maj Magister

[Spoiler-Free Review] The Forest is a first-person survival game with strong horror elements, marred by bad moment-to-moment gameplay. It starts with a great concept: something bad happens, and you have to survive the wilderness by securing food, water, and shelter. The problem is it just doesn't have enough going for it. Sid Meier (creator of Sim City) once said, "a game is a series of interesting decisions." The Forest isn't like that. 75% of your time will be wasted traveling; few decisions will be made; fewer still will be interesting. For example in another game you might find a resource and face the interesting decision of whether to abandon another resource to take it (due to weight or item slot restrictions). The Forest isn't like that. Because I have a distinct capacity for rocks and sticks, I'm never faced with a decision: I simply gather everything. Combat is also lackluster. While some enemies have reasonably complex behaviors and animations, combat is held back by the player's own weapons being dirt simple. Also the arrows shot by the bow drop to the ground like you're on Jupiter. The interface isn't great, mostly due to the developers getting more creative than is actually necessary. Often I found myself hunting around for the exact spot that I needed to be near a fire pit to be able to see the contextual option to light a fire there. Later, if I cooked a bunch of things at that fire, well they're not 3D objects that each can be used directly from the fire and good luck using the one you think you're aiming at. Also, picking up cooked meat from a fire is strictly forbidden. Your character doesn't know how to pluck 2 leaves from a tree. Instead, you must chop it down with an axe to get those 2 leaves. Don't ask questions. So is the game all negatives? No, definitely not. There are some great horror moments, and it's fun to free-form build your base in a nice-looking world. The audio design is particularly solid for an indie game of this scale, adding significantly to the horror theme. Maybe if someone is all about the horror elements, that'll be enough. But for me, those things didn't carry the experience. I mostly was just disappointed that the vast majority of my time invested in this game felt like a waste.