Sons of the Forest review: Maybe camp somewhere else

My wife and I had finished building our base. It was a two-story log cabin by a bubbling brook, surrounded by a solid fence of pointed logs. We were finally reasonably safe from the creepy monsters that had been attacking us at night. We’d made fish-catching equipment, a fireplace, even spears, arrows, clubs, and other implements. We were ready to investigate the mysteries of Sons of the Forest and its huge island.

But progress came grinding to a halt when we needed a shovel to dig up a body. We couldn’t make one. Despite all the other odds and ends we could craft, a mere shovel was not possible. What followed was a series of cave diving expeditions that blended together, gathering items that would let us access yet another cave, to eventually find the only shovel on this mammoth island.

As far as sequels go, Sons of the Forest does a great job at improving on elements of Endnight Games’ first entry, but ultimately it still suffers from some setbacks.

Are you LOST?

Sons of the Forest kicks off with a bang as you, a member of the press, crash land on an island after your helicopter comes under fire. Despite the horrific and intense moment, neither you nor any of your fellow passengers scream in panic as the chopper plummets to the earth. It’s a hectic scene that is punctuated by a bizarre lack of dialogue and hollow sound effects, a fact that will permeate the entire experience of this monster-filled land.

After you survive the crash, it becomes obvious that this island is not a Caribbean getaway, but a place teeming with mud-covered, semi-naked, and sometimes well armored cannibals. And those are the nice looking foes you’ll face.

The goal now is clear: survive, while also trying to uncover the whereabouts of the family you were sent here to investigate. While this is an interesting leaping off point, the narrative struggles along, as information is dripped out inconsistently, and when reveals do happen, it feels disjointed.

Caves, caves, caves

Part of the problem is how this story is constructed. In order to make any progress, players need to explore caves that are dotted around the island. You’ll need to go into one cave to get a piece of equipment, like SCUBA gear, that lets you enter the next cave. This winds up being a cave-hopping experience, which is by far the least interesting element of Sons of the Forest.

The one saving grace of these caves is the hideous monsters lurking in the dark. For those with a penchant to jump, you’ll be hopping and bouncing in your chair as another grotesque monstrosity lurches out, waving its bulbous limbs and dripping orifices at your face. However, for any hardened horror game aficionado, this won’t really move the needle.

Cave spelunking skirts the line of being a neat mechanic if it wasn’t for how far apart all of these caves are. You’ll spend ten minutes running to a cave (or riding a monowheel vehicle), explore it, only to be spat out at a completely different point on the map. This would be great, if there were any interesting landmarks to see or navigate by in order to find your way back home. What winds up happening is you’ll stare at your GPS as you walk along same-looking paths to get back to base. Even the massive, snowy mountain in the middle of the map is of little import and seems to act as just a means to add extra traversal time.

Thankfully, there are a couple of elements that help speed up this traversal system. The monowheel vehicle is an absolute godsend, especially after you’ve crashed the terrible-to-control golf cart into the hundredth tree. Sons of the Forest also has a delightful glider, though unless you’re up high or manage to find the launch pad blueprint, it’s of little value.

As you make your way through these stunning and gloomy caves, you’ll find out a bit more of the story. While there are a few glimmers of cool ideas, it never really goes anywhere. The game comes so close telling an interesting tale only to trip over itself as it points you toward the next cave you need to run through.

The disjointed narrative even affected the cutscenes, with a particularly egregious one at the end of the story that left me wondering if my game had glitched. The cinematic abruptly cut to black and then faded back in with the hero walking into a completely different area. There was a startling lack of continuity between the scenes that left me confused about where I was, how I got there, and what happened to my friends.

Build a better world

The saving grace of Sons of the Forest is its robust base building and crafting systems. Any item you can reasonably store on your person is put into your backpack and when you want to craft something, opening your inventory lays everything out in front of you like some sort of deadly picnic spread. I found myself opening up my inventory just so I could cast my gaze over all my goodies and see what else I could craft.

When it comes to the base building, Sons of the Forest gives you a helpful guide book that uses simple pictures to depict how structures are made. At first I needed its assistance to tell me I could put a tarp on the ground and raise one end with a stick to make a terribly unsafe resting location. But before long I was using its blueprints to make platforms on which I built a two-story log cabin, a slanted roof, and some basic storage.

There’s a lot of pleasure to be found in tweaking your base and adding in new storage systems, defenses, or farms. However, it can be a bit finicky, especially when it comes to structural supports. Sometimes I could remove them, other times I couldn’t, which left me with poles or crossbeams in areas where I wanted open space.

But the biggest boon to base management is my good mate, Kelvin. This character suffered a head injury during the crash and has seemingly burst his eardrums, rendering him deaf. As a game conceit, it’s rather clever, as it means you can direct him silently by using a notepad. By cycling through preselected actions, you can tell him what to gather and where to put it, to clear an area of a certain radius, or to follow you, rest, and the like.

This is extremely helpful, especially when it comes to the more tedious tasks in crafting survival games, like cutting down trees – which you will be doing a lot despite Kelvin’s help. I spent a good evening of playtime cutting down trees and shoring up the perimeter while Kelvin was running around collecting more wood. I’d work through my supply only to see a huge pile of logs he’d sourced. Thanks, Kelvin!

However, outside of building a base for the joy of construction, there’s not a whole lot of purpose to it. Once you get your base set up, that’s kind of it. You don’t need to craft better armor and weapons like you do in Valheim, there’s no great need for different clothing like there is in Grounded. You could completely ignore the base building and just finish the story or vice versa. The two aren’t connected in a meaningful way. I think the biggest draw here will be for those that enjoy the act of surviving – just keeping supplies going and making slight improvements to your base, like swapping wooden walls for stones.

Though Sons of the Forest is a visually stunning game, with god rays shining through the trees and snow covering the land during winter, it doesn’t outweigh the bad. The audio mix is all over the place with dialogue sounding hollow and enemy grunts sounding like they’re layered over the top instead of within the environment. Even the weapons lack any visceral punch. Additionally, there were problems when returning to the game where my wife’s character progression wasn’t saved, losing hours of progress.

Stick in the mud

Unfortunately, Sons of the Forest doesn’t quite manage to bring all of its elements together in a tidy package. While the building, crafting, and survival elements are neat, they’re not intertwined with the story, with both feeling like they’re completely separate ideas. Even the story seems unsure of what it wants to be, with odd pacing and poor audio design. I feel that fans of the original Forest game will relish the experience on offer here, but for everyone else, there are far better survival games out there.

This review is based on a PC code provided by the publisher. Sons of the Forest is now available on PC.

Sam Chandler

Guides Editor

Hailing from the land down under, Sam Chandler brings a bit of the southern hemisphere flair to his work. After bouncing round a few universities, securing a bachelor degree, and entering the video game industry, he's found his new family here at Shacknews as a Guides Editor. There's nothing he loves more than crafting a guide that will help someone. If you need help with a guide, or notice something not quite right, you can message him on X: @SamuelChandler