The decade-old survival game The Forest is suddenly bigger than ever on Steam

It’s not the scary, dark and dour moments that make you angry. Forest It is when you find something special – something beautiful. A survival game where you gnaw raw meat, craft crude weapons to beat to death cannibal monsters, and get horribly sick from drinking pond water, The Forest is also a celebration of life’s smaller pleasures. Especially when played with a friend, building a house together or sitting under the moonlight barbecuing the fish of the day gives a deep sense of satisfaction. Frostpunk has the politics, RimWorld has the mechanical complexity, and Valheim the Norse aesthetic has it, but The Forest (which is now ten years old if you take it from the oldest alpha build) remains one of the PC’s greatest survival games. And now it’s more popular than ever on Steam.

very often, survival games Trust the power of drama and incessant gloom. The more miserable a game is, the more evocative and intellectually engaging it is. Games should be sadder; There’s too much bland, cheerful escapism. However, pessimism is felt more strongly when balanced with optimism. For there to be ugliness, there must also be beauty. That’s apparently what Endnight understands. in both Forest and its sequel, Sons of the Forest, the developer balances moments of brutal terror with the serenity of the landscape. For every hour you spend stripping flesh from a dead cannibal’s leg bone, you spend two hours wandering the forest, fishing, or planting a garden.

Even now, a decade since its initial release and over 475,000 user reviews, The Forest maintains an ‘extremely positive’ rating on Steam. And as of this writing, a major player record has been broken. On Sunday, November 3, 79,451 people simultaneously logged in to play The Forest, reaching an all-time high. Sons of the Forest’s player count has also increased significantly: it peaked at around 9,000 on Monday, October 28, but has jumped to just under 50,000 in the last 24 hours.

Both The Forest and Sons of the Forest are on sale at 80% and 45% discount respectively. The bad news is that these sales are now over. The good news is that if you want to try or already own both games, regardless of price, there will suddenly be a lot more people available to join your team.

If you don’t want to go to the Jungle again, try some of the others best horror gamesor maybe best cooperative games Available on PC.

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