Seeing Between the Trees

The premise is simple: 

• A plane crashes in the woods
• There are two survivors (a father and son)
• The son is abducted
• The father must find and rescue him

From there things grow increasingly complicated.  The father is actually a survival expert, minor TV celebrity, and has been recently widowed.  The forest is actually a forest-covered peninsula with the only land access blocked by impassible snow-covered mountains.  If that's not bad enough, the place is completely infested with primitive tribes of cannibals and, worse still, horrible things in a network of caves just underground.  It's clear that the developers are big fans of the horror genre, as well as survival/crafting video games.  What makes The Forest stand out from the plethora of other entries in the genre is the refinement of its systems.  The enemy AI is clever and unpredictable.  The mechanics are open-ended enough that players can be creative with their building projects.  The game also has a some interesting little references to other media.

It's possible to find a human effigy that looks suspiciously like Lara Croft.  Along the shoreline there are non-interactable pig skulls impaled on wooden spears (a reference to "The Lord of the Flies").  The protagonist's last name is "LeBlanc" which might be a reference to "Les Stroud" writer, director and star of the "Survivorman" mini-series.  The primary antagonist is a bald man (painted red from head to toe) who has facial features very reminiscent of horror author Adam Nevill, a novelist with somewhat of a reputation for writing scary stories that take place in natural settings.  "The Ritual" (both novel and movie adaptation) is probably his most famous work, but he released another book called "The Reddening" which happens to be about a bunch of murderous cannibals who paint their bodies red.  Coincidence?  Possibly...

Spoilers to follow, so if you don't want to know about any late game details stop reading here.  There's a lab hidden underground that was, until fairly recently, conducting highly unethical experiments.  Sounds like Resident Evil, but it goes deeper.  There are unearthed artifacts that have been burred in the peninsula for a long time.  Nobody knows who made them.  It's all very Lovecraftian and a rather weird twist.  The developers have said that they were inspired by films like "The Decent" and "Cannibal Holocaust".  If you ask me though, I think the works of Panos Cosmatos had an even bigger influence on them.  

Overall, it's an dark but interesting game.  Some minor bugs persist even though it has left early access.  Further development has also stopped because the team has moved on to making a sequel aptly titled Son of the Forest.  I'm curious to see where the story goes and hope that the mechanics get some nice refinements.  Oh and the handheld camera recordings found in game is a nice nod to the found footage genre.