F2P Friday: A DARK FOREST

Lauren Darnell

A black and white illustrated forest with crows flying overhead and a cat arching his back. (A Dark Forest)

Welcome to this week’s installment of F2P Friday, where we highlight our favorite Free-2-Play games. October is here, so we’re playing our Fear-2-Play series, exploring free spooky games all month long leading up to Halloween. This week, we play A Dark Forest, a horror text adventure with a compelling resource management component. 

CONTENT WARNING: This game contains graphic horror images that might disturb some players and flashing screens. 

A Dark Forest 

The dark, dank forest enveloping the world around you is all you’ve ever known. It might be full of menacing cats and unhinged horrors, but it is home. You’ll either make it through the forest or die trying. The darkness doesn’t care either way. 

Inspired by A Dark Room, The Dark Forest is an incremental experimental minimalistic game developed in Godot. 

RELATED: Need more free games? Check out our F2P Friday archives!

The Basics

Let’s get down to the basics. A Dark Forest by the creator TinyTakinTerror is a minimal text game with virtual horror elements. This game is part mystery and part strategy, challenging you to balance resource collection mechanics and make game choices with very little information. 

The game mechanics are revealed gradually as you hit mostly unmarked milestones. Eventually, you’ll be splitting your time between collecting resources, exploring the forest, deciphering the cryptic warnings of the resident cryptids and appeasing the Eldritch horrors that haunt your screen. 

RELATED: Love mobile video games? Check out Mobile Game Monday for your next pick!

Why Should I Play?

Why should I play A Dark Forest? This game is deceptively complex and deviously addicting. The art and music create an unnerving atmosphere, but like any text-based game, the storytelling drew me in. The dialogue choices and slow-scrolling text notifications filled me with the most dread.

The forest will greedily siphon as of your life as you are willing to feed it, but there is a benefit to stepping away. There is no mad dash to complete quests or build your settlement, as with some balancing, the game will run on idle in the background. In fact, many things that dwell in the darkness of the forest prefer not to be observed. Keep in mind that your population will refuse to work while you are away if their needs for food, coal and other goods are unmet.  

Do you think you are brave enough to walk into these woods? You can try A Dark Forest through your web browser on Itch.io for free now. 

F2P Friday: STORM THE SWAN

Lauren Darnell
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