Into the Forest

I’ve started a new habit of playing a printed TTRPG every morning after breakfast. (it’s been two days!). I printed Into the Forest yesterday and it was my immediate pick this morning! I loved it! 5 stars! (Even better when I discovered I’m supporting our queer community!!)

Why do I like it so much: great setup, clear instructions, great prompts, including map and reference sheet at the end. It allows you to do multiplayer (cooperative or PvP) or solo mode, and offers several scenarios to pick why you go into the forest. And I was able to make it back home safely, which is nice 🙂 

I loved it so much that I decided to transcribe my notes to Miro, so you can all have a feel of the game! It was fun!

I've just completed my first playthrough, really enjoyed it! The last turn was quite bittersweet - I pulled the card with the 3rd and last Discovery with no supplies and 1 health, so my character fulfilled their goal then promptly died before making it out.

Into The Forest is a multi-player Wretched & Alone style hexcrawl about exploring an ominous woods.

It's 12 pages, with solid layout and some nice graphic design.

Unlike most Wretched & Alone games, Into The Forest deviates from the basic premise in almost every direction. Multiple players are supported. The game uses its own hex map. Players have tracked stats and resources. And there's a safe zone in which you can decide whether to play deeper into the game or to simply return home to safety.

There's also some unique gameplay modes provided, all of which give you different objectives at the outset and color your gameplay experience. There's even a competitive variant, turning things into more of a narrative boardgame with a clear (or possibly unclear) winner.

To this, Into The Forest also adds a number of difficulty / game complexity modifiers, introducing new ways to spend resources, new difficulty elements, and new context for existing game elements. If you'd like, you can simply turn all the mods on and have a medium complexity, pvp, flavorful woods exploration board game.

But if you skip that, play unmodified, or play solo, what you get is still a little different than a typical Wretched & Alone.

Yes, you have a deck of cards. And yes, it serves you dangerous prompts as you explore. But those prompts have as much decision-making in them as they do randomness. You can still get unilaterally killed by the RNG if you go too deep and don't have an exit strategy, but you have a lot of control over things otherwise.

The writing and atmosphere are also worth a mention, as the game effortlessly generates a kind of Southern Reach style atmosphere. The woods are spooky, ancient, and strange, and every prompt in the deck uses this combination to good effect.

Overall, if you like crunch, if you like hexcrawls, if you like cooperative/competitive board games, or if you simply like immersive journaling rpgs, I would strongly recommend checking out Into The Forest. It's excellent.