Sons of the Forest (Early Access)

The thunderous sound of rotors roar as two helicopters loaded with a task force head to a remote island. An elderly person has gone missing and our task is to find and rescue them. Just as is the case in other horror games, you barely have time to figure out what you're doing before the helicopter crash lands. Welcome to Sons of The Forest! This is your classic survival simulation. You need to eat, drink, sleep, build homes and craft medicine if you get sick. If you don't want to do it alone, you can invite a friend in a sleepless cooperative mode. This works brilliantly even in Early Access.

I started my journey on this island by meeting a deaf companion. Kelvin is his name. He is a soldier just like you, assigned to the helicopter on its way to this distant island. For me, the companions are the biggest novelty to the set-up here. Problems arise right away, if you build a hut in the trees and ask Kelvin to chop trees. He will likely cut down the tree where your hut is built. This means that your sleeping place is automatically destroyed. He may also start cutting down trees near your base, causing the trees to fall on buildings and damaging them. This is something I hope the developers will fix for the final release, as it makes Kelvin more of a hindrance than a help. One suggestion is to be able to set your companion not to cut trees near or on something you've built. As it is right now, you really need to think about whether you want to order your companion to build something. I quickly shifted his role to building simple campfires, sleeping places, and later to just retrieving things.

Another of the companions you find later can fight and try to fend off the mutants attacking you or the base, which makes for a nice and useful addition. Kelvin, on the other hand, who you meet initially, only collects materials, builds, and follows you. Unlike some other sandbox survival games, Sons of The Forest does have a story. The narrative is quite short and my experience is that it is not the main attraction. Rather, the better story is in the world around you. You have a large island to explore, full of space to build on and caves to delve into. Climbing down the caves is reminiscent of The Descent and can be quite harrowing at times, especially considering the further you go, the more mutated enemies. Speaking of enemies, every horror game needs a good lot of monsters. In Sons of The Forest, there are groups of mutants and cannibals chasing you. They are also camouflaged and can attack when you least expect it. They hide in trees and bushes, waiting for their prey and offering plenty of opportunities for jump scares. If you survive for a long time, the enemies will adapt and attack you and your base more often.

Another innovation in Sons of the Forest is its seasons. Summer, fall, winter and spring all continue in a loop. Just as you imagine, summer offers greenery and sun, autumn and spring make way for coloured trees and the winter brings snow. The contrast between the island landscape, the changing seasons, nature and enemies is great. One moment you can be trying to catch a hare and the next you are fighting for your life. When winter arrives, you need warmer clothes and food is not as easy to find. You can sew these clothes using items you find on the island. Weapons and other supplies can also be built using objects to cope with the colder climate. These are continuously rotated so you will need to plan for more winters. In many other games, this is purely cosmetic, but in The Sons of The Forest, the snow offers gameplay changes. To give some other examples, enemies become more aggressive in the winter. They hunt for food and it becomes less accessible. In this we become walking pieces of meat for the cannibals. We run around like chickens, build cable cars, throw hand grenades, dress in their body parts and try to cut down all the forest. It goes without saying that we become prey in their eyes.

Even though Sons of the Forest is in Early Access, it feels very complete. However, the story remains a bit too short for me to get involved. Rather, I enjoyed survival and exploration on the island. It's a beautiful game with a dark twist. One of the most evocative things is crawling down into your first cave. The water dripping, mutants making sounds further down in the darkness. It's creepy and atmospheric. The design and sounds are both an important component. I can report that they are very well done. On the animation front, though, things are also fairly polished. Running through vegetation looks good enough. The grass, bushes, and other things bend. It really feels like your character has a physical presence on the island.

After a while, however, this stops being a survival game. You find strategies and can construct better buildings. Traps, firearms and more become part of your arsenal. The roles where you are initially the hunted are reversed and you become the hunter. You still need to defend your base, but with all the equipment, you become very strong. Is that a problem? No, in my opinion it works very well with the rest of the experience. The game mechanics are great, I like how the user interface is built within the framework of the character's equipment. An example of this is the backpack that opens up and acts as a repository for everything you've collected. It's really easy to build things from that menu. I also think it's smoother and easier to build buildings compared to The Forest. It both looks and works more logically than its predecessor. If you select sticks and click on the ground, your character sets up a bonfire. It may seem insignificant but small improvements can make a big difference.

My overall impression is that there have been upgrades to the base building, the survival system, the graphics, the sound and the dynamics of the world. It has been done in a good way, I especially like the new seasons. Winter and summer create contrasts in how you play. Not quite as big a change as day and night in Dying Light, but still significant. The graphics look noticeably better and shine in the caves and outdoors. It doesn't have quite the same polish as high-budget titles but it's impressive what Endnight Games has created. The developers have promised more content, updates and polish for release, but I am positive about the Early Access content. The story is the weakness but if you liked The Forest or are looking for survival horror, this is a recommendation. On my list of things to test remains fishing with hand grenades. I will return if it is a successful survival strategy.