The Forest Quartet is an easy game to like. Blending an enchanting aesthetic, a beautiful score, and a simple story told predominantly through gameplay, falling under its spell is an immediate thing. The game takes no time at all — you can beat the entire thing within a few hours if you feel determined.
RELATED:Games To Play If You Like The Forest Quartet
While itsunique art styleleaves a hauntingly gorgeous impression, it has some issues. Of course, nothing ultimately detracts from the experience it gives you, but it can draw you out of the strange, musical forest and keep you in your own head. Everything can be improved upon, after all.
6Clearer Objectives
Sometimes, you float around this strange, spindly forest without any clue where you should be going or what you should be doing. Lamp posts light your way, but they can be easy to miss if you’re stuck in your head about your next task. Especially since the game does not actually tell you what your next task is meant to be.
you may’t hold it against the game — the experience is built around the concept of the woods, and the woods are so very easy to get lost in. It’s just that when you’re playing something, you want to have some vague idea of your next steps. Losing yourself in the story and the music is much more difficult when you’re fretting about whether you’re dealing with the current puzzle properly. And, to be fair, sometimes there are hints around — maybe we’re just a little too impatient to see them.
5Less Repetitive Puzzles
Each area, or, more accurately, each manifestation of a band member’s psyche, has a different set of puzzles to solve. They predominantly focus on bringing or connecting light, which is a simple but effective motif. They’re fun, satisfying puzzles that keep you on your toes.
RELATED:Best Puzzle Games For Those New To The Genre
Sometimes, though, these puzzles can begin to feel repetitive after you’ve spent enough time in one area, maybe getting a little lost in the strange forest. As a thematic element, it works perfectly, but if the puzzles got switched up every once in a while or were cut outright, it might make for a smoother, if shorter, experience.
4Let Us Leave The Puzzle Areas
When you play The Forest Quartet and come to one of the bigger puzzles, suddenly, the path you came from is no longer viable. This can be a little annoying, especially if you feel you’ve already gone in the wrong direction or missed a crucial piece of that particular puzzle.
Letting you retrace your steps, when possible, would help you feel freer. It would also help alleviate feelings of being stuck in a small space, with your success depending on your ability to solve what seems like an easy puzzle. Being locked in the area with the puzzle is a little disheartening — especially if you’re having more trouble than usual figuring it out. Puzzles should be challenging, but they shouldn’t feel inescapable. Allowing you to move around would make the game flow better and let you take in more of the richly illustrated world.
3Brighten It Up
This is a little unfair, as one of the mechanics in The Forest Quartet is your ability to brighten areas through song or activating lamp posts. And yes, you are supposed to be stuck in a labyrinth — it should feel dark and foreboding. You, despiteyour ghostly aura, should be the only light source; it makes perfect thematic sense.
It’s just that, when playing the game, the stark darkness can make the spaces challenging to navigate — especially the Cellist’s level. It would be nice if your character’s ability to bring light was a tad bit stronger if only to make things a little less confusing. All in all, the darkness is not a deal-breaker — it’s a slight annoyance. But slight annoyances can pile up.
2Streamlined Space
The forest comes inmany different forms. It can be shadows posing as trees in the depthless dark or a beautiful autumnal scene. Or, it can be a raging inferno, destroying everything in its path. You are perfectly, wonderfully lost when you walk through these strange trees in this strange land. The Forest Quartet paints a vast, ever-changing wooded world with no end or beginning.
RELATED:Walking Simulators That May Or May Not Make You Cry
Until it’s been a few minutes, and you’ve found yourself wandering in circles within the game. It’s not as if it’s maze-like, yet somehow you constantly pass the same lamp post, sometimes without even registering it. There are no waypoints — you move on whims, but really, a waypoint or two would be heavily appreciated. At least a hint about whether you’re moving the right way.
1A Little More Narrative
The Forest Quartet uses its mechanics wonderfully to convey its tale, and each puzzle you solve gives you a little snippet of the storyline. This is through small conversations between the band members, seemingly during an interview. They talk about the forest, its meaning, and how they’re doing.
It’s difficult to insist that a game more about vibes than outright narrative should have a more concrete story. As a meditation on grief and the need to move forward, it doesn’t need big, flashy moments to get you to understand what it’s trying to say — you don’t need cutscenes, a wall of text, or any of that. A few more minutes with these characters, whose lives we are entrenching upon from beyond the grave, would be great. Nina, the player character, knows them, but you don’t — a few more conversations could have done wonders to help you understand the game’s overall goals.
