Summary

The Forest is the model which Early Access titles should follow. Despite existing in a system that is ripe with easy cash grabs and broken promises, the developers have provided consistent updates and communication for the past 2 years. While it does have its fair share of shortcomings, it is still an enjoyable game that I've consistently revisited over the past couple of years.

What is The Forest?

The Forest loosely follows the story of a plane which crashes on a remote island. As the player wakes up from the crash he sees the son that he was traveling with being taken away by a humanoid. The player is then given complete freedom in the world to find a way to survive both the environment and its inhabitants. At any point the player can choose to progress the story and find the secrets of the island and his sons dissapearance.

Pros

• Beautiful looking environment with solid assets and animations.
  
• A robust crafting and building system that allows its players full freedom.
  
• Solid co-op play experience.
  
• Some replayability. I've restarted this game over 10 times.
  
• Consistent updates and a dev team that seems to listen to its playerbase.

Cons

• Some performance issues that are primarily caused by a lack of graphical options and backend scaling. This seems to be an engine limitation with Unity.
  
• A story which lacks depth and endgame content.
  
• At this point I believe the game needs an expansion of the island to add additional play experiences.