The Forest

[Raphael van Lierop]

Curious to know if anyone is playing this, and if so, what do you like and not like about it?

For the record, from what I've played, gameplay is philosophically quite different from The Long Dark, but of course we're mining some similar territory with aspects of the survival systems.

[robdoar]

Checking it out now, hadn't heard of it before.

[robdoar]

Played for a few hours, definitely some similarities.

Plane Crash, Item Scavenging, Crafting/Building, no map/navigation, ability to hunt/trap, success measured in number of days you survived.

There's no zombies (thank God) but there are cannibalous natives.

It's in alpha, but right now there does not seem to be any objectives to achieve.

Many of my survival game criticisms still persist in The Forest. Instant success in crafting, building, fire-making, hunting, etc. (no variables). You can start a fire in the pouring rain with no problem The animal AI and NPC AI are irratic and non-realistic. There is also no correlation between energy / hunger used and the complexity of the tasks.

I do like the survival guide that you get to reference. I also like that the environment is mostly interactive, you can harvest materials from just about anything you see.

Overall, it's entertaining, but far from realistic. I don't see it at the same level of complexity and realism as what I expect from TLD.

[speef22]

Played for a few hours, definitely some similarities.

Plane Crash, Item Scavenging, Crafting/Building, no map/navigation, ability to hunt/trap, success measured in number of days you survived.

There's no zombies (thank God) but there are cannibalous natives.

It's in alpha, but right now there does not seem to be any objectives to achieve.

Many of my survival game criticisms still persist in The Forest. Instant success in crafting, building, fire-making, hunting, etc. (no variables). You can start a fire in the pouring rain with no problem The animal AI and NPC AI are irratic and non-realistic. There is also no correlation between energy / hunger used and the complexity of the tasks.

I do like the survival guide that you get to reference. I also like that the environment is mostly interactive, you can harvest materials from just about anything you see.

Overall, it's entertaining, but far from realistic. I don't see it at the same level of complexity and realism as what I expect from TLD.

Very well said across the board! I agree completely with what he has said about The Forest, I would like to throw a small bone it's way by stating that it is Alpha 0.01(which he clearly states as well) so I hope that many of the things listed above will/can be ironed out or added in. I do like the game so far quite a bit, large feeling, open world to explore, night time has a dangerous feeling to it, which I love. All in all I am excited to see a new, fresh take on the Survival genre(NO ZOMBIES, YAY!!) taking shape here. I'd like to second his call out of the same survival shortcomings that The Forest and basically every other Survival game has and would love to see fixed if you will... I'd love to see crafting not always work, and/or work on different levels(poor,mediocre,good quality, ect...), fires not always lighting, skills to hone as you survive longer and use said skill and improve it, thus increasing the success of that skills output/effect.

I am also happy to hear that Hinterland is looking at the landscape of games past and present to help shape TLD!!! A sign of a professional studio indeed!

Keep Grinding Guys!!

-J

[robdoar]

The game has a long way to go until it's ready for prime time.

The bugs make it virtually unplayable after a little time.

[anomrabbit]

[offtopic]

cannibalous

Cannibalistic? I make up words regularly, so cannibalous makes sense, but it's a bit difficult to pronounce, not that cannibalistic is any better, really.[/offtopic]

[robdoar]

That's what I get for sacrificing sleep to play a new game. ;-)

[logang]

Just watched some Youtube videos for this game, can't play it at work, and it looks like it could be entertaining. I agree with you @rob that the level of interaction and the survival guide definitely look like they would make the game enjoyable. Another thing I like about the game is apparently the site of the plane location is random, something like that would be nice for a sandbox survival mode, random starting location.

Not really into the whole cannibal natives and the construction mechanic using x number sticks and x number of leaves to build a tent is kinda lame.

[Scrapy]

Please don't take ZOMBIE'S or Monster's to The Long Dark :roll: i want a survival simuation :3

[Raphael van Lierop]

Please don't take ZOMBIE'S or Monster's to The Long Dark :roll: i want a survival simuation :3

I promise there will never ben zombies in the game. The only monsters are people.

[Scrapy]

Please don't take ZOMBIE'S or Monster's to The Long Dark :roll: i want a survival simuation :3

I promise there will never ben zombies in the game. The only monsters are people.

Thank You very much , and one more question, when the game come out ? or the alpha sandbox ? :3 ( I really want to play )

Thank's

[Raphael van Lierop]

The Sandbox Alpha is currently being tested by a small group of our backers. We'll be rolling it out to the rest of our backers who pledged for Alpha support sometime soon. Later, we'll be on Early Access -- exact timing TBD.

[revisedreality]

Some of the longer reviews here are pretty spot-on. I've spent some time in The Forest, and it's hard not to be at least a little impressed.

While it does have fundamental gameplay flaws that have already been mentioned, it's still an interesting take on a survival game, and an amazing feat considering the size of the studio and the small number of artists and programmers working on the game.

The "horror" aspect obviously comes largely from the cannibalistic natives which can be completely disabled and left out of the game, but if you go that route, you're left with a survival simulator that lacks challenge and a real sense of reward (But even with the cannibals, things just seem a little too easy to accomplish). When utilized, the natives obviously add a huge layer to the game (as in the entire story), but quickly - to me - seemed like more of a nuisance than an added challenge. They lurk and charge at you with no real sense of purpose, which definitely tends to throw you off and send a little jolt through your nerves...But somehow, even though the game feels flat without them, I feel crowded and annoyed when I see them charging through the trees. I don't really feel like it's fair to critique that aspect much more, since the game is still being developed, and hasn't even reached the point of opening the entire map, which will certainly also open up the rest of the story. I feel like the natives will become more developed and better understood as the game build progresses, but if they don't, I can't imagine myself being interested in going through a long gameplay with them; as antagonists, they're so far largely uninteresting.

There are some neat little things that have been incorporated: You can use, kill, and manipulate pretty much every single aspect of the island. If you kill a native, or anything large enough to really bleed on you, you're advised to step into the ocean to clean the blood to avoid an infection. I'm not sure that specific aspect has been developed much further than that; as I've never received any kind of infection from leaving myself covered in blood and smashing through the forest like a maniac, I can't say I've encountered any negative reactions that I had to deal with. It'll be interesting to see where small things like that go.

Inside of the Rift, The Forest looks pretty cool. Some of the textures are really well done, and the lighting is mostly realistic. I can't spend a long time in the Rift in this game because it's not natively supported yet, and my modding gives it that unavoidable edge warping you get when you run it through second party programs. When they do implement native support, I really think it'll be the immersive experience they're promising. On a related and unrelated note, Among the Sleep has handled Rift integration quite well. I know I'm a little Rift-obsessed, but it's just such a cool way to play!

Long story short, I think TLD will have a lot of things people were hoping to see from The Forest. That being said, and at the risk of repeating myself, The Forest is still in development and is still being worked on by only a handful of people. I obviously haven't seen TLD yet, but they seem like totally different beasts at their core. I think facing desperate humans will be far more interesting than anything I've encountered so far in The Forest.

Sorry if everything I wrote was just repetition of other posts! I don't know many people that have actually had a chance to play this game, so I thought I'd chime in

[Raphael van Lierop]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on The Forest!

(And for what it's worth, our team isn't much bigger than theirs. )

[revisedreality]

(And for what it's worth, our team isn't much bigger than theirs. )

It's actually worth quite a bit! You guys seem like you've done some really amazing things so far with a pretty self-contained team. In all honesty, I first saw this project mentioned on Mark Meer's Facebook, which is what drew me to it. All I kept hearing after that was how amazing this game would be and how high expectations were because of the list of names attached to it... I was a little concerned that kind of hype might detract from what you guys were trying to do, but everything I've seen from the development stages you've all been kind enough to share have so far proven me wrong.

Apart from this team and the other tiny team working on The Forest, I also purchased a city builder called Banished. I don't know if anyone's familiar, but that game was made and updated by one guy. No team for anything, just him. Every time I feel overwhelmed by a project, I just think about these games and my motivation seems to magically reappear! I don't know when they'll finish building The Forest, but I'm so glad TLD is expected to be released when I'm nearly done with school...I'd never get anything done.

[Raphael van Lierop]

Yes, I'm always very impressed with these really small teams of like 1-2 people who can put out high quality games. We wear a lot of hats at Hinterland, but we still have the luxury of being pseudo specialists.

[accurize2]

I played (livestreamed) The Forest on day 1, minute 1. It's impressive given the dev resources. I agree that it's much less realistic from the whole 'assess, plan, act...assess, plan, act...' cycle to survive that TLD accomplishes.

Honestly, I loved DayZ, The Forest, Project Zomboid, ect... because it was a challenge to survive. But, as I've said ad-nauseum during many gameplays or livestream of the previously mentioned games...'why doesn't anyone do a straight survivor simulator?'.

Once I found TLD, I started touting this as the possible answer to my gaming prayers. After playing TLD, I now know gaming prayers got answered! Does that make Raphael God?!? There are dark corners of the world where such non-sense has been uttered...

There are also others who whisper that he was sent by an alternate realm. A realm bent on making TLD so good that it ruins all other games, making them pointless and laughable. Thus creating a certain amount of misery in the process of forcing us to play gluttonious amounts of TLD, almost like it's a drug!

[klesh]

Raphael, I'm late to the party here but the one takeaway from The Forest that I would like to see implemented in TLD is that more things are done in that game by the actual player performing actions (think chopping down a tree for wood, lighting a fire or spearing a fish). It's more visceral than TLD's versions of those actions which are performed via a menu.

[DenverDad]

I had not heard of this but will definitely be checking it out now. Added to my steam wishlist!