Heart of the Forest Review

Heart of the Forest tells the story of four students who decided to venture into the Black Forest. Unfortunately, they get more than bargained for as they fall under the spell of a vengeful spirits living the woods. Confronted by their deepest fears, the students will need to fight for their survival in order to escape the clutches of the evil spirits.

Heart of the Forest is an interactive movie where your choices have consequences. You’ll watch characters interact with one another and at specific parts of the events, you’ll be prompted to make a decision between two choices. As with any game of the genre, each decision has a impact on the story. As you progress through the story, the game will reveal the level of corruption from the forest for each character.

And dependinging on the conversational choices you’ll make, they can be taken over. While by default you’re prompted to make a choice within a few seconds, you can enable Streamer mode in order to have unlimited time. It does help when you’re on the fence because sometimes both choices are tempting so you can take your time to decide. Which brings me to my next point.

As with any other Wales Interactive published projects, one of their strong points is definitely replay value. Given its conversational mechanic, you can replay the game and make alternating choices in order to see different events, outcomes and endings. Once you’ve finished the game once, you can access the Story tree to see where you can make alternating choices.

The scenery of this interactive movie is spot on. While forests can feel daunting for some of us, the one they picked here is absolutely creepy, atmospheric and unnerving. The overall camera work is absolutely spot on and provides an enjoyable immersion factor. However some of the physical acting leaves a bit to be desired and is not really credible. Without spoiling anything, while of the characters get choked, you can clearly see the assailant’s hand not even close to the throat.

On the audio side of things, the acting is believable for the most part. There’s nothing really cringe worthy, nor Oscar worthy but each character delivers a reasonably believable performance. The absence of a proper soundtrack enhances the unnerving experience and this is one interactive movie that benefits greatly from being enjoybed with headphones; especially when the characters are exploring the caves.

The main gripe I have with this, or any other, Wales Interactive interactive movie is when you make a choice, there’s always a few seconds of cliffhanger like time freeze which sorts of break the flow of the events and the “movie”. I do understand the why, but I do wish they’d work on this so once the choice is made, the game instantly picks up where it left off. Also there’s some annoying over the top lights flickering towards the end of the game; I had to look away because it was giving me a headache.

Heart of the Forest is another banger brought to you by Wales Interactive. The game features a great story where you see characters descending into madness. The acting is enjoyable; not too cringe or over the top. The setting and ambiance is top notch and can be enhanced with headphones. While you do get used to the clipping post-conversational choices, the flickering becomes annoying towards the latter end of the game. That being said, Heart of the Forest remains a great experience with a lot replay value. Whether you’re a fan of the genre or looking to dive into, this is a great one. Don’t miss it.