Dragon Slayer Awards are here! The Dragon Slayer Awards are fan nominated awards for communities in online gaming organized by Guild Launch, Gameskinny’s sister site. Every year fans (you) are invited to vote for their favorite games/people/communities in each category. One of the nominations for Best Indie Game this year is The Forest. This is one of five games competing for the award. Voting is taking place now.
The Forest, Endnight Games’ latest single-player survival horror adventure, released its Alpha on Steam in late-May of this year. Since then, the game has received positive reviews from many news sources:
“Despite its cannibals, The Forest delivers a survival experience that feels more “real” than many of its counterparts. You hunt, build shelters, and fight in a beautiful world that’s oblivious to the action. – Gamespot Review
“The atmosphere is subtly but noticeably different – scarier, prettier, more concerned with the realistic nuts and bolts of lonely survival than multiplayer mayhem or Minecraft-esque construction. – Eurogamer Review
The Forest begins with you being the lone survivor of a plane crash, but you are not alone on the island. Cannibals roam the area you inhabit, and they are precisely what makes the game so interesting. You must spend your days exploring and collecting supplies to build your base to protect yourself from the cannibals at night. By using stealth, you can successfully kill these creatures, though seeing one implies there are others nearby. If you observe these creepy, human-like creatures, you discover that they are actually smart.
The cannibals travel in packs stalking their prey: you. They show emotion: fear of fire, curiosity as they examine you rather than aggressively charging towards you, and sadness when mourning the loss of their own. These dynamic creatures are part of what make your time in The Forest complicated. They kill you and haunt you; but observing them begs the moral question of who is really the evil one inhabiting the island.
When The Forest isn’t creeping you out, it’s letting you take in the view. Endnight Games has recently activated a “Vegan Mode” that deactivates enemies in The Forest. Now you can die a slower death from diseases while wandering through the beautiful terrain. Since it is still in Alpha, new patches are constantly being released. You can keep up with this on the game’s website.
Although no release date is set, you can purchase The Forest Alpha for $14.99 on Steam. There are plans to port the game to Oculus Rift and to eventually add a co-op mode. As of now, the Alpha is only available for PC.
The Forest may just be another survival-horror game, but it’s adding new concepts to the table. If you’ve played it and loved it, go vote for it as the best 2014 Indie Game here and help it win it’s very deserved Dragon Slayer Award! You can check out the other nominees here.
