Finally, another title has left Steam’s Early Access library, this time being the survival horror title The Forest. Now you can battle creepy multiarmed cannibals, and search for your son, without any of that Early Access glitchy mess. Just … don’t forget to fortify, this survival horror game is no joke!
Videos by ComicBook.com
“Today The Forest moves from early access into a full release,” announced one of the devs on Steam. “It’s been a crazy ride, made possible only by the players who have supported us for the last four years. To the team here it feels like a game we all made together, us and the community. Your input suggestions and feedback has been invaluable to us.”
The full release brings with it a ton of new aspects to the gameplay experience, including more ways to craft, “This version of the game adds a bunch of new stuff, from a craftable warmsuit, significant re-work of the endgame and a new alternate ending. Along with this there is a ton of cave re-work and polish and many many improvements and fixes.”
It’s going to be a wild ride, as you can see in the latest trailer at the top of the article, and one that fans of the survival genre will definitely want to check out. The Forest is now available on PC via Steam.
In addition to the game’s full official release, a new patch has also gone live with further optimizations for the title and more, which you can see below:
Improved range of fire lights
Set medium quality settings to previous version settings
Taa off by default, turn on via options menu
Fixed repairing small log cabin
Fixed attaching plastic torch to weapons
Fixed Cave 8 bridge room floor
Fixed Cave 8 broken waterzone
Fixed grade contrast for caves and nighttime
Fixed repairing defensive spike
Fixed creepy armor value not accounted for in stats page display
Fixed missing icon on sled after loading a save
All tasks are now striked through after doing alt ending
Fixed wrong menu mapping for dualshock gamepads with xinput on
Fixed missing dates on save slots in title scene
Added clouds beside window in opening plane cutscene.
You can now craft a spear bag, which will allow you to carry up to 5 basic spears
Improved lighting in opening cutscene drag away scene
New pick up item added, Hairspray! Use hairspray with a lighter for a mini-flamethrower. Findable in some suitcases and in specific parts of world.
You can now carry upto 10 rabbit skins, and 10 deerskins
You can now retrieve boar and racoon skins! And carry 10 of each in inventory
New art added: skinned boar
New icons added for slingshot, hairspray, raccoon and boar skin
Fixed shooting arrows into end boss causing arrows to scale incorrectly
Fixed chainsaw still animating when out of fuel
New item added: (spoiler)
New item added: (spoiler)
Pooled props such as benches and chairs now stipple on smoothly when approached/backed away
Added spoiled meat shader. Meat will now visually decay depending on its state.
Improved look of cooked rabbit, lizard
Multi Thrower now uses grab icon instead of climb icon
Menu buttons when activated are now a yellow instead of grey to make it clearer they are on
Fixed some wrong capitalization in options menu and renamed ‘fastest’ preset to ‘very low’
Fixed lock icon when placing body in a part of endgame
Added 4 new buildable creepy head trophies !
Fixed dynamic text in book and on manifest so they aren’t visible when book is clipped
Fixed lighting on text in book and manifest
Updated new font shader for smoother font edges
Improved look and resolution of blue inventory tarp
Made lighter yellow to be easier to see on inventory tarp
Added small white dash under page numbers
Next and previous page buttons are now spaced out across both pages
New xbox and ps4 controller icons
Fixed extra pixels visible at top of flame texture sheet on stick lit
Fixed gazebo built not lining up with gazebo ghost
Head trophies can now be harvested from creepy corpses
Added signals page in book in place of effigies. Effigy page now shows up after sanity falls below 50%
Calories are now always considered positive and lead to gaining strength unless in hard survival difficulty mode.
Player collect and switch clothing system. You can now find specific colored suitcases in the world which have outfits you can change into. Some caves and specific locations have unique outfits.
Darkened inventory UI backing when hovering an item
Held flares now require right click to light
Added new space, l and r icons for keyboard interaction
You can now use the rebreather light in the ocean at night
(Multiplayer) Dying with an empty inventory no longer produces a backpack
Reworked inventory item descriptions, and placement. Less text overall.
Increased thickness of yellow outline when hold to select an item
Improved game start times!
Added new endnight logo to start of game
Major memory improvements/reduction by removing unused assets and older duplicates of plants that were no longer being used
Deerskin can no longer be equipped as an armor piece (check below for replacement)
New crafting cog icon, new mp dying skull icon.
You can now craft a warm suit! Wearing a warm suit replaces all of your current armor forcing you to choose between warmth and damage protection.
You can now wear armor skin from dead creepies. This is the strongest coolest looking armor in game
Added some hairspray pickups to some of the further beach huts
Added clothing switch suitcase to some areas near snow and in further cannibal village locations
Happy birthday trap text now matches rest of book
Fixed some wrong legacy left over icons
New check off animals system added with drawings. As you find animals and plants in the world, the greyscale drawings will turn to colored pictures. To activate, look at animals or plants up close for a short period of time.
Fixed player not holding logs properly if logs were picked up while cold and hands are empty
Improved cut geometry when chopping dead shark heads!
Aligned construction UI with camera
Run speed now slightly increases with athleticism skill level
Improved the look of ambient occlusion
AA, bloom, dof, motion blur, chromatic aberration, grain, all are now using unity post processing.
Added new improved camera image effects for aa, bloom, motionblur chromatic aberration, eye adaptation and grain
4 New structures added and become available when you: (Spoiler)
You can now equip timmy photo from inventory to remember him!
Icons on backpack quick select tooltip now render correctly
Item tooltip now extends length if item name is longer
In game pause menu now uses action icons instead of hand icon
Small generic meat renamed to small meat and Generic meat renamed to meat
Meat freshness is now displayed in the description line of the tooltip instead of the item name
Fixed all meats not in caps
FixedX icon inside stuff like circle eat food a few pixels too high
Fixed translation showing localized text for keys no longer used in english (ie: removed item descriptions)
Added plant/animal specific message when ticking off stuff in nature guide
Tweaked prev/next gamepad icon action position in book pages
Rewrote cell culling, should fix a lot of the tree flickering, and several cases that left distance cell rendering enabled
Player will now stop and look at a photo of Timmy if attempting to leave the world on a raft
Improved placement of distraction devices and bombs that are placed on trees
Rearranged positioning of many items in the inventory
New stealth armor model and textures in inventory that match worn version
You can now carry the full armor amount of each armor type
Action icons 15% smaller will help with left hand side messages
L to light now has the circle around it before pressed to indicate you need to hold.
All items in the inventory now animate and play a sound when hovered over! Crafting items together will also cause an animation to play and the cog will spin when hovered.
Added missing translations in mp scene
Player are now faced with a decision to either (Spoiler) or (Spoiler)
Gamepad can no longer navigate to the top buttons in options, use bumpers to navigate instead
Checked missing Caps option in options & title scene
Fixed rafts sometimes bouncing up and down weirdly while in water
Fixed player moving at wrong speed when attacking immediately after a downward strike
Added new Loading/Unloading Caves message while entering/exiting caves
(Multiplayer) Improved animation sync of creepy ragdolls in MP
Fixed player able to fire empty flintlock pistol while in aim mode
Book texts are now dynamic, allowing translations to smoothly blend in
Newly picked up in world items now shine in inventory until first interacted with to alert you about the new item
Fixed walkie talkies not working correctly on dedicated servers
Performance – fixed some always on dynamic objects falling out of world at game start
Ingredients recipe now shows along product icon and name when adding ingredients to the crafting mat, giving you a list of all possible items you can craft using this ingredient.
Player can no longer save while doing other actions like entering caves or climbing ropes
Fixed spacing of embedded action icon in between labels
Finished the book drawing buildings! These should make the book feel more enjoyable to look through and make quickly identifying structures easier
Selecting pouch or quiver in inventory now correctly highlights entire model
Improved look of selected materials in inventory and fixed manifest not highlighting when selected
Changed bottom left message limit to 5 per message type at a time (ie: no more than 5 got item entries)
Clothing outfit pickup rolls now give far fewer chances of receiving already owned clothing pieces
Added a 0.2s delay before showing tooltips in inventory
Fixed boats being pushed if moving against additional built structures on them making them easy to flip over
Item tooltip positioning improved
Performance – improved cull grid performance
Sheen inventory now uses a screen space effect! Fixes sheen effect being affected by UV’s
Fixed player able to shoot multiple rocks from slingshot
Fixed quickly hovering a single item on crafting mat sometimes leaving it wrongly enabled
New base fire effect. New molotov fire effect. Replaced also player on fire and enemies on fire with new fire effects!
Improved positioning of blood when hitting enemies.
New close map, pedometer and rewind icons to replace legacy text
Same bonus upgrade recipes are now combined into a single entry in the recipe list shown when adding ingredients to the crafting mat
Performance: Optimized a bunch of textures, and fixed and removed a ton of old referenced textures and models that were no longer in game
Performance: Cleaned up a bunch of unused resources that were being kept in memory
Upgrades can now be placed automatically replacing the fiddly old system.
Fixed cases of upgrade ingredients on crafting mat not showing the filling cog
New crafting mat action icons design
Added new outline ghost shader. A thin outline will appear around outlines giving them more of a drawn appearance and making them easier to see in various lighting conditions.
Fixed cursor appearing below filling cog in inventory
Fixed far shadow option still calculating even when disabled
Procedural buildings point locking logic now properly check for permission to build on dynamic structure, thus effectively preventing doing so with current state of the features
Crafting tutorial now says to open book and doing so will now open the crafting chapter. replaces the tutorial in inventory when acquiring molotov ingredients for the first time
Calories text in stats pages and inventory item tooltip is hidden unless in a hard survival game
Fixed can see through heads on effigies small and large
Fixed houseboat ghost building too high above water
Chair now requires deer skin instead of rabbit skin to construct
Fixed multiview created crafting inventory views retaining the selection outline
Fixed molotov liquid sfx playing when loading a saved game
Fixed stash item whoosh playing when loading a saved game
Fixed stash lighter routine playing sfx even when lighter isn’t equipped, was triggering for example when bending the bow
Fixed player name display on load save screen
(Multiplayer) Fixed wrong font used in parts of the chat UI
Fixed button hover visual in book remaining active after clicking on a link, and flashing off when going back in previous pages
Fixed place/take icons not always updating correctly on food holders
Removed building proximity check on structures where it didn’t make sense, such as bridges, ziplines, leaf pile traps, sap collectors etc
Fixed bench and armor mannequin missing build hammer
Improved positioning of hammer icon on ghost structures and fixed some cases of icon visible before ghost position was placed
(spoiler)
Blocked building rafts on terrain, can now only be built on water like rest of boats
Dpad down button is now bound to the Utility action when using a dualshock gamepad
Fixed cloth wrapped clubs missing alpha cut out effect and fixed wrong uvs on burnt cloth
Cloth wrapping weapons is now red
Improved look of held weapon fire and added distortion effect
Improved look of flintlock smoke
Fixed case of going back to pause menu with a gamepad leaving the action icon halfway inside the continue text
Fixed shiver animation still playing after becoming warm
Blue skin while cold now smoothly blends on and off
(Multiplayer) Fixed some characters having excessively shiny hair
Improved look of bonfire flames, and blocked cooking on bonfires. Can now only be used for heat and to attract enemies
(Multiplayer) Fixed revive player action icon remaining visible after looking or walking away
All plants in the nature guide are now checked off by looking at them briefly in the world
New underlake plants added
Regular enemies can now destroy cannibal art structures by running through them
Improved look of the big lake in game that crosses world
Fixed ghost structures appearing stuttery if moving left or right while placing
Player no longer gets stuck igniting lighter when attempting to light fires and structures
Fixed backing on loading screen being grey instead of black
Caves – Old suitcases in caves can now be broken.
Added sledding tutorial
Procedural building UI now as inverted lock/unlock icons when using a gamepad to match physical position of buttons
New 3d crafting cog art
Made all action icon sizes more consistent
Added a confirm overwrite save feature
New quick select inventory UI design to make quick selecting easier
Tweaked camcorder, map and walkie icons position
Rewind icon turns off immediately when stashing camcorder to prevent possible overlap with map icon
New underwater lake refraction visuals! And fixed looking up in cave water and seeing only black. Scene now correctly refracted!
Added darkening in cave entrances to cover transition of player entering and loading
Switched walkman to right hand to make it possible to use fire to turn it on and off! Instead of having it stuck on forever
Now assigning items as quick select by pressing the matching buttons after combining backpack with an item on the crafting mat
Now dynamically centering the switch ghost wall type & cancel ghost icons instead of using preplaced position which was not centered in case of unused icons
Burning plants are now considered as destroyed immediately and fire can no longer be cancelled by walking away to trigger a LOD change
Instancing support thing
Burnt bushes and plants now spawn the cut version with same material look/effect after burning down
Removed coordinates from pause screen
Target no longer requires blue paint to build
It is now possible to store creepy armor on armor rack !
Options menu fixes, fixed gameplay buttons, cleaned up gamepad nav, setup anchors to ensure buttons don’t overlap each other in other languages
Fixed weapon rack widget
New cave climbdown area covers and fixes can stand on opening holes
Removed annoying loud bat screech from title scene
Forcing always caps translations
Joining a game with no player slots left now reads “Server Full”
Kicked from a game message now reads “You have been kicked”
Banned from game message now reads “You have been banned by Host”
Player backpack recovery message now reads “Recover your backpack”
(multiplayer) Updated icons above players heads
Renamed up and down in key binding to forward and backward
Fixed placing a flare on mat showing prompt for crafting a “Flare Gun” instead of “Flare Gun Ammo”
Options are now linear instead of looping back around
Dynamically created at runtime texts like build missions are now translated if changing language at runtime
New decorative props added to cannibal village climb entrance
Made colored difficulty backings consistent across different game modes
Fixed scale of headless burnt bodies
Fixed big gap at top of mappings table
New trap re-arm UI using same design as constructions and updated traps icons
Item thrown as projectile with the catapult now use the correct pickup icon
Fixed a rare occurance of grabber sometimes resetting its collider continuously, thus resetting any timed input until looking away and back
Door weights now only accept rocks and skulls and can no longer be collected back
Limited multi thrower to rocks, skulls, dynamite, molotovs and bombs
Added new gore underfoot sounds to gore piles in caves
Optimization – buildable lights and fires will now turn off from distance
Molotov’s and held burning weapons are no longer extinguished by rain
New black backing stripe added to pause menu
Stealth icon is no longer visible while on rope
Fixed berries not moving with bush in garden
Fixed in cave state sometimes breaking when entering swim caves
Fixed some minor issues in (Spoiler)
Fixed geese lake water reflection being too small for size of lake
Matched brand of vodka on held and shelf/inventory versions
Ghost models now use the same geometry and the final build versions, making the models line up perfectly.
Log sled built now has set flag color that can’t be changed to help identify its location
Improved placement of weapons on racks and holders!
Performance – removed deprecated items from the action icon atlas
Burning weapons are no longer extinguished when entering caves and climbing ropes
Setup dynamic signals / effigies / family effigies book pages
New buildable added: Sos marker.
Items that cannot be crafted due to being at max capacity in inventory now show up in recipe list with an icon showing it cannot be carried
Fixed rock model in some destroyed structures not having underneath model
Fixed climbing a rope attached to a structure that was partially broken causing rope animation to play in wrong position on rope
Big dead tree logs now fade smoothly on and off
Old caver tents now fade on smoothly and from further away
Setup all systems that involve adding or taking an item and were playing the whoosh sfx to play a custom sfx for any item that has one
(spoiler)
Procedural bridges now use 3 half log model variations !
Fixed lowering texture resolution breaking cave entrance visuals
Gamepads DPAD buttons now work as well in menus to navigate
(Multiplayer) Todo list is now properly carried over to the new character after dying
Food no longer loads in save games on fires
Procedural stairs now display actual shape before locking first point
Blocked building on small prop tents in world
Fixed bats fly out of cave position being wrong
Cloth covered stick upgraded in inventory now positioned correctly with cloth showing
Fixed the very first lag spike that use to occur when launching a game
(spoiler)
Player can no longer climb very short ropes on platforms/treehouses
Switched book todo font to more readable font
Fixed position of anchor icons for all elevated structures
(Multiplayer) Fixed buildings placed on tree structures not properly removed if the tree is destroyed
Added missing bush 5 billboard
Fixed suitcases not appearing in caves for clients if host is not also in the cave
Removed paints, flintlock and toy from crafting achievement and replaced with other craftable items
Added small snow camp and fixed alternate frozen man not appearing
Fixed some collision areas in snow and extended height of cliffs to cover low resolution mountain
Reworked crafted axe textures and bloody variation
(Performance) Added LODs to procedural bridges
(Performance) Added LODs to defensives walls
Dropped bodies will now smash and push away small objects in their path!
Improved zipline environment detection to prevent placing the rope through things as much as possible
Fixed water level from water collector not decreasing if drinking not thirsty
Fixed ghost birdhouse sometimes being wrongly not placeable
It’s no longer possible to burn bodies placed in the log sled
Fixed fortune pickup respawning if you already have it
Cloth on enemy racks no longer re spawns by going in and out of its close vicinity
Replaced inventory cod with new cod model/textures
It is now possible to remove defensive wall gates using the hole cutter
Fixed missing breaking apart effect when destroying catapult
Fixed some held animal heads in wrong position on other players
Improved lods for when oceans turn on/off
Rebreather is auto equipped now when diving underwater in caves
New skin models and art for skin rack and for skin in inventory
Fixed cant add some items to metal tin tray in mp
Fixed adding lizard or fish to tray and not having them visible on mat
(Multiplayer) Fixed a bunch of case of distortion not occurring for clients when damaging building
Fixed procedural floor and roof sometimes not parenting correctly with its supporting structure
Fixed switching defensive wall to gate loosing parenting information
Improved some cases of placement of defensive wall reinforcement difficult
Fixed error log spam when using walkie talkies in mp
Fixed some areas in snow cliffs you could walk out of world or into collision areas
New cliff lods for snow area stipple in gradually instead of pop
Deer & rabbit skin can no longer be placed on terrain as decorations
Added loading UI when opening endgame
Timmy drawing placement icon now matches the top of the placed visual
Setup ghost foundations to turn last edge red if not lockable
Fixed procedural wall & derived structures showing place icon while not possible to place due for example to having a tree in the way
Advanced controller support (XInput) option now on by default + resetting the value for everyone, can still be turned off if needed by going in options but having it on allows features like throwing spear to work fine with XBOX gamepads (driver issue when XInput is off)
Fixed position of sodas on food holder
Fixed cut blackberry bushes falling through terrain
Added lod to caught rabbits in cages so performance didn’t take a hit with lots in a game
Fixed steam overlay leaving the shift key stuck pressed
Cave 1 – fixed holes and new lighting
Cave 2 – fixed holes, new lighting and polish pass in several rooms. Tried to make the hanging room more inviting.
Cave 3 – fixed holes, lighting and transition areas between other caves
Cave 4-5 – hole fixes and polish
Cave 6 – huge pass on lighting and general polish and fixes
Cave 7 – Lighting and hole fix pass
Cave 8-10 – overall polish pass
Hellcaves- polish and fixes. New corridor layout added to cavern room
Yacht – added new locked door and improved room props
Enemies should no longer get stuck on the corners of Happy Birthday traps
