Forest Keeper Reviews

This is the second release from LBGames, a dev me and a friend found while googlin' around for some fun games to play, and so I'm playing all of their games to show them support, but also giving my honest feedback on them all. Forest Keeper is a game that could be simplified into an asset-swap survival horror game, and you wouldn't be too far off. But I don't think this is an asset swap in the sense that is was made to make money as much as it was made by a developer passionate about the game idea. Being it was a survival-horror, I definitely wanted to try it first from their games lineup. I won't get into spoilers but I will cover what I think was good and bad below. The Good. Forest Keeper's concept is pretty straightforward and bland, but I think the way the story is told makes sense. I like the whole "mysterious island with a weird past" approach and I do enjoy that. Another positive is that the mechanics the game do use remind me of a watered-down Amnesia, but I do think it works in that nature, it gives me some creepy-ish vibes and I do think the night-time vision level works well to set up that atmosphere. The fact there are different monster designs are neat, and the plot, while bare-bones, is understandable and makes sense on a short-horror-game scale. I thought the UI was simple but effective as well, it really fits the vibes. The Not as Good. Forest Keeper is a game that is latent with performance issues and bugs. Multiple times I would have to reload the game to get some items to spawn in, like the Lantern during the first night for example. Or I would spawn in a place not intended at the start of the day an run around in circles to figure out where to get the first objective. The biggest of these issues for me though was that I couldn't rebind any of my keys, the menus just froze when I tried to and that was a bit frustrating from a UX perception. I wasn't a huge fan of the "shoot monsters to survive" portions, I do think it could've been built up to a little more and less gunplay-heavy as it does remove the horror aspect of the "unknown threat" that the game introduces; for example Dead Space, a game that starts by terrifying you with things you don't understand before slowly giving you the tools to deal with them. The only other major thing I think was an issue was the VA, honestly, I'd rather not have it. It takes too much away from the tone, and just an option to turn it, and only it off would be appreciated. Overall, for a sophomore release, it could be worse, but I do feel like this game could've taken a few player test periods, or benefited from a short early-access like Gloomwood has and is for a oddball comparison. But it was enjoyable, worth an hour or so on sale since the current asking price is a bit steep for me personally, but it's fine if you enter with some tempered expectations. Also rip my bugged steam achievements [h3]Selfish ad[/h3] Follow my curator if you like this dumb review stuff https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45356407/