Most survival games have an element of terror, giving us an inhuman hunger that will kill us if we don’t eat a three-course meal every five minutes. I like jokes. The forest clings to terror, with cannibals and mutants chasing us, and the sequel to the story-based survival game is looking wonderfully awful. The developers, Endnight Games, have announced that they plan to release Sons Of The Forest in 2021, and have shared a new trailer showing what is waiting for us in the trees. I don’t like it, I like it.
Some things:
- Is this a friendly mutant? (I would be kind of inclined to guess a hallucination, just because tropes of terror).
- I like the animations and the effects of elaboration and construction. Dropping that piece of trunk to a window is very slippery.
- I’m glad that the villains still have a slow, cautious and deliberate pace. Circling is much scarier than carrying.
- Also great: the guy trying to steal one of our logs. They are trying to survive here too. The guy afraid of dying is just horrible.
- But, man, I don’t really like what looks like us masquerading as one of them with, uh, a mask. You will be absolutely afraid to see through disguise at the most inconvenient moment.
The Forest had early access in 2014, finally being released in full in 2018. Our ex-John (RPS in peace) called it “a great achievement and a survival horror game that somehow manages to keep these two elements surprisingly separate and still allow to impose on the other in very interesting ways ”in his criticism The Forest. It was still a little raw, but Endnight continued to fix it, including adding VR support. Years later, we still say it is one of the best survival games. Hey, it’s half the price in the winter Steam Promotion.