Sons of the Forest is finally appearing in the Steam Store tonight, contrary to what was announced initially only as an Early Access version, but still. Until a year ago, I would have probably removed the “finally” from this sentence, because although I feel comfortable in the survival genre – I’ve played Conan Exiles and Minecraft a lot – the predecessor The Forest passed me by for a long time. Until I hit our private Discord server in the evening last March and assumed that we would talk nonsense there as usual, have a beer or two and play a little Destiny 2, WoW or Deep Rock Galactic.
To my surprise, however, I broke into a conversation between three friends about mutants, cannibals, suitcases, caves and camps. After a few minutes, I asked the obvious, “Uh, what are you guys doing?” The answer: “We started with The Forest yesterday, do you want to? One spot is still available.” A visit to the store, 15 euros and about two minutes of download time later, I was on the plane during the intro of the game and a little later crashed onto the island of The Forest.
My co-op squad had already set up a makeshift camp and was looking for wood for a hut. So quickly grabbed a few provisions, put the first weapon in our pocket and … 100 meters away from the wreck, without further ado, I was killed by some random meanies. Damn.
I briefly forgot that The Forest is a survival game – and not a walking simulator. On the second attempt, I had to do without the lost inventory (which was in the center of a cannibal village…yes, walking through it was probably a stupid idea) but got my three co-op island vacationers mostly unscathed.
The coming evenings were a smorgasbord of obscurities, achievement hunts and of course exciting cave excursions. We first set up a larger base camp: a hut for sleeping and storing things, tree platforms for an overview, a pond with fresh fish, a herb bed, a rainwater catchment basin for fresh water and a palisade fence around it with sharpened wooden stakes for security.
Along the way, we started exploring the caves. Since we didn’t look at guides at first, the order was probably suboptimal, but gradually our inventory was filled with flare guns, climbing axes, breathing apparatus, diving masks, chainsaws or my beloved katana.
Sons of the Forest: How the predecessor surprised me (3)
Source: Endnight Games
We also encountered the first really disgusting mutants, which we first set on fire, then chopped up and finally chopped up to make armor – at least at this point it was clear that we would be doing questionable things in The Forest.
At the same time we found the first collectibles like parts of a toy robot, photos or the IDs of the other – very unfortunate ended – plane passengers. Of which often not much more was left than the ID and a bunch of mesentery.
These finds, however, awakened our instinct to collect, so that we first set about completing various achievements instead of continuing to follow the story.
We explored all the caves including the smaller ones in the ocean (1.8% completion rate on Steam), collected all the toy parts, found all the passengers (1.5%!), farmed fish and trees with dynamite, ate every mushroom we could stumbled, and ended up building a church somewhere on the beach, a car made out of branches, a wooden dog, and a totem made out of body parts – for some reason, because the plans were there.
And yes, the “Eat a family” achievement, where we cooked and ate mutants, ended up on the “Done” list. I’m not proud of it. Yes, somehow.
Sons of the Forest: How the predecessor surprised me (2)
Source: Endnight Games
And of course we did a lot of mischief. For example, when one of us had to leave the field for ten minutes and we shot arrows into his head to see if they counted as friendly fire. Or when we found two shark heads on the beach and gave up all other activities to drag them across the map for almost ten minutes and nail them to the wall as trophies at our camp.
And of course the regular attempts to set each other on fire with the flare gun (works great) or blow each other up with dynamite (much harder). nonsense stop. But there could have been a secret achievement behind it.
I don’t want to spoil the ending of the story because after we got most of what we set out to do, we moved on to the finale – and that made for a real “what the hell” moment, proper frowns, and too the question of what might be in store for us in the sequel.
So if you want to catch up on the first part: It’s worth it. Even if the game is anything but perfectly optimized and its early access and indie origins are noticeable in many places.
So now the second part is just around the corner as one of the first survival games in 2023, which wants to offer even more of everything. More island, more monsters, more crafting, more WTF moments, more co-op players. Our four-person team has also firmly planned an island trip – but whether it will start directly for the release is still in the stars. But maybe I’ll log into the Discord tonight and they’ll talk about mutants, caves and base camps…
