i didnt put much time in game , just rushed story mod to get what is going on and go for son's of the forest
but ye you can spend a lot more time than that to build , etc and having fun at same time

Funny and very cooperative game
the experience is better if u play it with a friend
cuz if u play it alone, it can get boring sometimes
buy it if u have friends to play with!!

In general I don't know how to feel about this game. It’s a fine game to mess around with friends in, enough to do so that’ll you have a few sessions worth but ultimately not something I see myself playing again. First point of interest being the map, it’s big enough to explore for a while and there are some interesting things you’ll find, however the overall map lacks story and can be traversed from end to end in less than 5 min. I get that the game has put the survival aspects first but getting more clues to what happened prior to the events of the game before the very end would be a nice addition. There are small parts of the story dotted around but very sparingly and often hidden meaning most people will miss them so in my opinion there has been some misstep when laying out the story to the player. This combined with parts of the game that feel completely disconnected from the rest like the boat and shark feeling much like an afterthought.

The game however has some fantastic systems, the inventory as an example might be the best I’ve found that feel and look plausible. Having things placed as if it were real with limited spots for differing materials etc while having a balanced carrying capacity. Combined with a crafting system that feels natural for the materials and tools you have, it really makes it feel very well thought out and different from many other games. The survival aspects work well with resources spread about the map plentifully allowing you to get better gear as you progress while having lots of alternate ways of sustaining yourself with the natural resources of the world.

The other highlight of the game is definitely the caves and caverns, being full of realistic rooms, flooded caverns and tight squeezes with areas where you have to climb using pickaxes, scuba dive and other things that make the caverns feel real. The map is full of them and most of them have a purpose or connection to other caves, navigating only with past explored areas marked on your map and your local sense while you slowly run out of torches. Entering one cave and exiting on a whole other part of the map after 2 hours of underground spelunking is quite the experience. Finding all these entrances can be a hurdle but considering that exploration is a big part and needed to finish the game I see this as a good push from the developers to get the player to explore every nook.

Graphics, sound and general art direction is good if not a little uninspiring with it being “realistic” but it works in the favor of the horror elements so I can see why that choice was made. The music also works wonders for atmosphere and suspense and ties in great with the overall survival feeling and good animations. The performance however is a bit all over the place especially with the physics engine. Getting in and out of caves can often result in some things not loading correctly or lag spikes and anything involving physics can majorly break frametimes. From you cutting down trees using dynamite to enemies destroying your base, the game will most likely lag anyone with an average spec computer. Outside of this though it’s quite clean unless there’s too many enemies at the same spot.

The variety in both animals and cannibals is great, having a little bit of everything for you to hunt down and get hunted by, all having different weaknesses and strengths etc while having very unique designs. The cannibal and animal AI however is quite wonky, when it works it’s really great and makes the entities in the world really feel alive. The problem occurs when it doesn't work as intended, this unfortunately happened quite often during the 2 playthroughs I’ve done. Entities quite often lose track of you or get stuck in geometry in weird ways leading to immersion breaks. There is also the worm, a bizarre formation of cannibals that conceivably can’t function and IMHO goes against the art direction while seeming more like a joke than a feature as it’s just a weapon of mass destruction for the few unlucky players who’ll have it spawn.

As for the things I don’t really vibe with. Biggest of these is base building and I love building in most games, here however it’s just a chore and lots of back and forth. Taking time to cut down trees, transport the logs to where you wanna build over and over again just isn’t fun even if it’s realistic. It takes lots of time to just build small structures that are frankly mostly useless. Considering the inventory system there is not much need for storage as you just need a small leaf tent to save and sleep. Placing your base in a good location is a much better defense than building 200 walls and takes way less time. It just feels like a waste of time to put down countless hours on a base when most of the game is about exploring and all the walls can be knocked down in a single swoop of the mutant cannibals. Building big also seems to make the physics engine cry whenever something breaks and resembles the source physics that shoot things with infinitely more inertia than what they should have.

Story elements like cutscenes also don’t really work in multiplayer, sometimes everything triggers as it should and sometimes it just triggers for one person. This leads to some people missing out on the very small amount of story that exists meaning we had to load a save and use screen share so everyone in the group could see. This is a big problem but would be a smaller problem if there were more story to go off which unfortunately there isn’t. The story in itself is fine however.

Achievement catalogue is a mixed bag, some story based, some really neat challenges and some that are just a big grind or getting them through a dozen playthroughs worth of playing. I would probably complain if it weren’t for the in-game console allowing you to increase tick speed and doing some of these in an hour or two instead of 30 and the ability to blow up trees to cut them down. Overall I don’t think I would have played this game alone so I’d really only recommend you to get it if you plan to play with a few friends and possibly waiting for a sale, though the base price is fine for the content provided.