Gaming 06/05/2020

How I Survived Horrors Of The Forest With My Friends

As we’re now well into the lockdown life I thought I’d try and lessen the feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world by getting a handful of my friends together to play The Forest with me. What I didn’t realize was that getting friends together to play games is a lot harder than I thought it would be! Especially since everyone is so busy playing the unopened games they bought so many moons ago before the lockdown that they didn’t have time to try before now.

Before we all joined the survival party together we dabbled a bit with the game by ourselves, exploring and learning what it was all about. I only actually found out about the game through a friend.
With each of us already knowing the idea of the game, we moved in to set up our base. I think at first we all had the same idea, which was basic survival and avoiding fights with cannibals. But as we survived more days and killed more of our unfriendly neighbors we one by one started drifting away. Stepping further and further away from our safe zone so that we could collect more food and trying to find ways to get off the island or items to help us survive.
Any of us who stayed behind to set up the base (not me, I was off exploring!) would constantly hear warnings from the group who went off into the depths of the forest. And by warnings I mean sudden cries of shock and people yelling “I’M COMING IN HOT!!” as they realized they were being chased down by a group of cannibals eager to have one, or all, of us for dinner.

Although this was just our first game night as a group it was fun to see how others reacted since when I first played the game I really disliked it because of how creepy it was. I didn’t have any issues with the gameplay or graphics and it’s definitely not a bad game at all, but the first time I saw a cannibal and realized they wanted to eat me I immediately wanted to turn the game off. Since my first experience with it I now really enjoy playing it with friends, but when I’m alone I turn into a real scaredy-cat.

The story starts off pretty fast with a plane crash in which you seem to be the only survivor apart from your missing son who has been taken by the hungry cannibals. It is your job as a parent to survive and find your son OR survive and get off the island. Stepping out of the plane crash you are thrown into the deep end and are just left to survive with absolutely no indication of where to go or what to do. You can scavenge a few bags lying around while looking for items that will help you survive. Things like tape, cloth, drinks, and snacks will all become super helpful to keep yourself alive!
As you press forward with your survival you can build and craft everything you need. However, finding everything is not so simple as some items and clues about your missing son might be hidden deep inside a scary cave.

It’s a fun game to play with friends and a fairly large amount can join. Currently, we are 4 players but one game can take up to 8 people!! Which should make things a lot more interesting if we decide to up the stakes and make the game mode a lot harder, which would probably just increase the level of fun and scares in the game. Watching my friends do their best to keep themselves alive is already lots of fun but I can only imagine that upping the difficulty would make it even funnier!
For me, playing the game alone would not have the same impact as I definitely wouldn’t be so brave when it comes to exploring or trying to finish the story. So the more friends who join me the easier it is to be brave and laugh at the scary experiences.

So in order for us to survive the first few horrible nights with only ourselves and the hungry growling and screaming of cannibals as company we had to think fast and smart. We had to build ourselves a little protected base, for more advanced players they will know that the cannibals cannot swim and that the base had to be on another island. However, for the noobs like me and my friends (apart from one person), we rushed to get our base set up which means we needed LOTS AND LOTS of wood.
As we did that I often tried to chop down a tree hoping it would fall in the direction of one of my friends and hurt them (I’m not mean, it’s just really funny!!) however that quickly backfired ALL THE TIME because someone shouts that the enemy has appeared and everyone runs to back them up, while I’m still in the background shouting “Wait for me!!” or “Where did you all go!?”. Things get really serious as I try and rush back to the camp in order to survive and protect each other. This is when I tell my friends how horrible they are for leaving me behind, but truth be told if I would stop for a second and not drop trees on them I could possibly hear the warning calls…

Since surviving my first few nights in The Forest with my friends and building a small stronghold for us all to live in I have to admit that I am really enjoying the game.
I’m already trying to convince more people to play the game with me and to join us for game night, and I’m also already begging them to play the game more with me outside of our scheduled Wednesday night survival session. I honestly think the game is a great way to spend time with friends who goof around and just want to have fun without any serious goals in mind. That is what I really enjoy about The Forest, it allows us to become one with nature during the lockdown as we fight for our survival.