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Why is Sons Of The Forest exactly like an early-00s b-movie thriller, though?It would have a pro-wrestler or ex-American football player in the lead

It would have a pro-wrestler or ex-American football player in the lead

The protagonists terrible tattoo in Sons Of The Forest: script on the inside of his right wrist reading ‘Fight Demons’

“Have a go ofSons Of The Forest,” my compatriots at RPS told me. “It’s a great newsurvivalgame, with cannibals who live on an island!” And I was like, “wait, so until you turned up to they just eat each other? How do they have a sustainable population? What’s going on here?”

Sons of the Forest: How To Survive The First Few Days | Ultimate Beginner’s GuideWatch on YouTube

Sons of the Forest: How To Survive The First Few Days | Ultimate Beginner’s Guide

Cover image for YouTube video

The main character is there with his squad, one of whom is gurning at you in an openly unsettling way, and will clearly be the comic relief for the rest of the film - and he is! It’s your buddy Kelvin, who is the only other survivor of the crash and, having been deafened, obeys your aggressively written notes to shamble about building whatever. Imagine how many yuks this would be played for in the movie. Also, there would be a scene where the cannibals manage to track the survivors because Kevin dropped one of the notes. Classic Kelvin.

Stop staring, Kelvin. Boy, I hope Fisheye, who has a covered face and doesn’t look up, survives this! |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Endnight Games Limited

Kelvin, a soldier in black tactical gear, sits nest to another soldier with a covered face, in a helicopter flying over water

The insta-crash, leading to waking up on a beach and discovering the bodies of your be-piked comrades? Opening your survival kit on the ground? Walking down a path and suddenly seeing a cannibal, who runs away into the trees - before you’re ambushed later and have to try to beat the fucker to death with a rock? Those are all shitty action movie beats! There’s even a woman in a swimsuit with constantly visible nipples.

Other compelling evidence: the fact that you are there to look for a missing rich guy called EdwardPufftonand his wife and daughter Barbara and Virginia Puffton, and I refuse to believe anyone seriously wrote the name Virginia Puffton this side of 2005. Then, of course, there is the tattoo, which literally everyone has honed in on as the most embarassing thing they’ve ever seen: badly kerned script on the lead character’s inside right wrist reading Fight Demons. It’s so bad that I believe everyone who has played this game has a picture of it, because it’s impossible to play that opening with going “WOAH-HO!” and hitting your shortcut command for a screenshot as soon as you see it.

A screenshot of Sons Of The Forest showing a man’s body impaled on a spike, with a seagull worrying his head

The laptop in the opening of Sons Of The Forest, showing that an old white guy in a dinner jacket called Edward Puffton has been missing for 31 weeks

I believe that this is much more easily explained if we assume the movie script was called Fight Demons, and that the tattoo (which appears at around the point you’d expect the title to) would sort of imprint on the screen. Beat. Beat. Cut to Kelvin explaning how long Virginia Puffton has been missing. And later in the film it turns out that the main character got this tattoo because he was an alcoholic who passed out and thus wasn’t able to save his wife and child… fromcannibals.

In short, no, I have not been playing a lot of Sons Of The Forest very seriously, because I built a floor and then couldn’t put my tent on it, which made me cross. However, I would very much like someone to make the movie version, because I would like to watch it a lot.