Endnight Games’ The Forest is a fairly creepy open-world survival game. You wake up in a heavily forested area after a plane crash and in its first few moments, you’ll witness what looks to be some kind of cannibal drag your son away. That sets the tone for what is eventually a pretty strange adventure, and one that’s been available via Steam Early Access since 2014. Now, an announcement trailer reveals the title will make its way to PlayStation 4 in 2018.
Four years after the original game launched for Early Access users, PC gamers have yet to receive an official release after it leaves Early Access. Yet somehow, The Forest is expected to finally be up for grabs for PS4 gamers.
In The Forest, players must work to create their own shelter, weapons, and other tools for survival while stranded, all the while avoiding the cannibalistic mutants who also dwell in the peninsula. These cannibals are nocturnal, so you can avoid them in the daytime, but they’re aggressive and difficult to avoid at night. They’re afflicted by some sort of mutation that’s part of the deep-seated secrets in the game for you to uncover as the game wears on.
The cannibals comprise a big, important part of the game that we won’t spoil here, but they can regularly interact with you in different ways. These mutants operate in packs and they’ll react to your actions by surrounding you as they communicate with one another, helping each other out and retaliate against you together. However, they may also surrender to you when they happen upon you out of fear. There are no missions in The Forest to complete, but there is an optional way to bring the game to the end, so you can experience the plot in its entirety.
Endnight Games’ The Forest is much like games such as Don’t Starve or DayZ, but it manages to remain more engaging and thought-provoking than those titles. If you’re looking for something that’s a little more intuitive and single-player focused than Rust or games of its ilk, you may want to delve into The Forest when it makes its PlayStation 4 debut.
