Squelch. Crackle. Crunch. Cackle. I can’t think of four words that better describe my time with The Forest so far. Crawling its dark caverns and fighting its crazed cannibals has been exhilarating and exhausting, and despite being 10 hours into this Lord of the Flies meets Resident Evil by way of Outlast and DayZ affair, I’m certain I’ve barely scratched the surface. Generally speaking, I can take or leave survival games, but The Forest effortlessly weaves old fashioned horror – jumpscares, unpredictable enemies, nefarious corporations, unseen and awful-sounding terrors that lurk in the dark – around its survival mechanics; a move that keeps both elements intrinsically tied, while somehow also making them feel like separate, independent things. Combine this with the game’s open-ended structure with a narrative focus, and you have something that straddles the horror, survival, and survival horror genres simultaneously. It’s very clever.
