In Sons of the Forest, Adventure Writes Itself and Surprises With Strangeness
Sons of the Forest is a strange survival adventure in a world of cannibals and mutants. At every turn, I feel the amazement of this wicked sandbox, and while playing, the story creates itself – though I have to tell parts of it myself.
The rescue mission turned into a disaster. Together with Kelvin, my deaf companion who can't fight but is a great fisherman who helps me with construction, I found myself on an island infested with cannibals and mutants. You can't imagine the things that are going on here.
Dear diary, it was the first day on the island...
Survival requires weapons – a makeshift spear made of a stick, duct tape, and a knife quickly became my weapon of choice and was immediately put to use. There were some natives in the area, and I wasn't sure if they were cannibals or other, harmless inhabitants of the island. They didn't defend themselves, so there's a chance they were not the cannibals. Well. What's there to do? Maybe get rid of the traces? Kelvin, make a bonfire. Let's burn the bodies. Just in case – we weren't here, we've done nothing wrong.
Sleeping under a tarpaulin isn't super comfy, but for the first night – it will do. On the second day, however, we need to start building a proper shelter. The house on a tree looks promising, then we'll try to work out some wire entanglements. Except I can't find the stupid rope anywhere, and it's essential! I searched, and came across the tents of other survivors, who are probably already dead. The cannibals are watching me (by the way – I saw their camp earlier, you can see that they like raw human meat), expressing their displeasure with my presence with loud roaring. Kelvin shows them where they belong – literally, he points his finger the other way and hopes they will follow. It's not very effective.
Maybe I'll just cut this forest down, because the cannibals are some sort of ape-men jumping trees like Tarzan. I'll also make a bow and get them from a distance. First, however, I need that damn rope – I'll try on the beach, there must be some junk there. The enemies make it harder for me to reach the location and I have to scare them off with my improvised spear.
Near the beach, on a kind of cliff, I decide to build a new shelter, normally on the ground, so the rope may not be necessary (it turned out it was, but soon I found it anyway). Now, we're getting to work with Kelvin. Suddenly, I see miracles – a poorly dressed, beautiful girl with three legs and arms appears, and starts dancing. What the...?
Learn, build, explore, survive
Sons of the Forest casts us at the deep end, requiring both learning enemy behaviors and the structure of the land. It's a full-fledged survival, complete with a building system and spiced up by danger, which makes me shiver. No words need to be said for emotions to work. Partly on the screen, partly in the imagination – the story of survival unfolds itself.
The world seems huge and probably hides many interesting secrets. I can already feel the potential for very rewarding exploration. Although there are some cutscenes (eg. at the beginning, when we crash), I suspect we'll learn more from the environmental narration. We need to carefully search for information in order to combine it and draw the right conclusions. Not everyone will like this form of storytelling, because it requires more involvement, and at the same time doesn't allow you to get into the plot through dialogues (there are not too many of them).
Sons of the Forest deserves a chance as it offers a truly immersive experience. It creates a lot of room to show off, allows you to play the way you want – here, every solution is good, as long as it ensures survival. And since it's still only early access, it's easy to shrug off the errors or the raw condition of the game in general. However, if this scares you off, wait for the full release and then see if you can survive in the hostile environment dominated by cannibals and mutants and learn the nature of the events that transpire on the remote island.
