Green Hell is a survivor simulator set on Amazon Forest, placing us in a detailed and immersive world to explore, developed by Creepy Jar. In this journey, we have to fight against huge challenges, stressful and complicated. So, for those who liked The Forest but found it easy, let me tell you: this game really is a “green hell”.



Possible narrative

The game story brings an important and realistic subject and a surprising big narrative line. Our main character is the anthropologist Jake Higgins, responsible for releasing a book with scientific studies about an indigenous tribe named Yamahuaca. This causes problems because, after the release of this material, the North American army is going to explore and study this tribe, causing several problems to the local society.

Because of this, Jake feels guilty and decides to go to Amazon with Mia, his wife that is going to make the interpreter role, intending to fix everything. Arriving there, they settled in a hut well equipped, so the game tutorial happens, it is really basic and effective to learn the minimum (we are going to learn more as we play).

Continuing, after 2 days Mia will continue the journey and make the first contact with the tribe, at this moment everything becomes a mess when she, through the walkie-talkies, screams desperately for the help of her companion that goes running to help her and end falling and fainting. When he wakes up, Jake is alone with the mission to find Mia and survive in the forest without any items because we lost everything.



Choose your favorite mode

Besides the story mode, which I hardly recommend to everyone because of the interesting narrative, it also has a Survival, Challenge, and multiplayer mode. Survival is a free world style, you don’t have to fulfill quests, you only need to survive. As the name suggests, the Challenge mode gives us goals that need to be done in a determined time, making everything even more challenging.

Multiplayer mode is quite fun to play with friends, if you start together with someone, learning everything at the same time, I’m sure that are going to happen memorable scenes because of the difficulty of the game. This way is possible to play in both Survival and Story mode, and the cooperativity can be important as a facilitator element, you can divide the tasks such as crafting and taking care of the food.



We are alone, but not so alone

To start, we feel tiny all the time in the forest, the predators and prey, which will increase over the story, showing all the impressiveness delivered by Green Hell. With this sense of tininess, there is also the solitude, we are forced to survive entirely on our own, hunting and collecting, a lot of times only with the environmental sounds, besides the cutscenes where there is music that contributed well to the narrative, giving a sensation of reality that we have to compromise to be able to survive as if our lives depend on this.

“Alone”, with a lot of quotation marks, since every 2 meters, we will find several dangers that are going to leave you tense and concerned because you don’t want to die or get hurt. Among these, be careful, when you see a man with white tint painted on his body, don’t be ashamed of running and hiding, they’re not your friend and you certainly are not welcome here, because you’ll be the prey without any mercy. And it’s not only that, jaguars are going to chase you, snakes and mosquitoes are going to sting you and you’ll need to learn how to deal with the poison, including with some frogs that are deadly by touch, and I’m not counting the annoying leeches every time we cross the river. Prepare yourself! It’s not going to be easy.



Some mechanics are essential

I decided to separate a topic about this, in Green Hell we have very important items and, to be able to successfully progress, we need to learn to use everything. Explaining it by parts, first, we receive a notebook that is going to be indispensable, this is because in it is possible to find what we need to do, such as quests, plants utility (the book has images that we can easily recognize), how to treat venomous stings and injuries, constructions to save the game, fires and others. In other words, that book is extremely important, right? We are going to need it every time, crafting is essential!

Besides that, we win a backpack and a Smartwatch. The backpack is easy to use, with specifics compartments to separate the belongings, and with it, we gain access to a crafting table, a little more difficult to use, because here you’ll need to find the right combination to create a superior item. Moving forward, the Smartwatch is responsible to show our character’s vitals, hungry (separated in needs for proteins, carbs, and fat) and thirsty, the watch also has hour and cardinal points (north, south, east, west), that will be used when we’ll find a map in an abandoned village. To be honest, in this, the game fails a little, that is because on the map is possible to find symbols of important places unlocked when we found them, but it doesn’t have a cursor, leaving us entirely at mercy of our good sense of locality and a bit of luck to be able to find these important places.

Since I’m talking about the mechanics, Green Hell’s controls are simple and easy to learn, you won’t find difficulty in this but you’ll find it when you deal with everything that I described because you may need some time and patience for a simple reason: if you can’t use these mechanisms, you are going to die.



Beautiful environments and well-develop

Regarding the visual art, both the forest and animals have a unique beauty, it is not only the most advanced graphics, that is pretty clear when you see the minimum requirements of the game, with 4 GB of RAM you won’t be able to play on ultra, but you can play, the magnitude of the game and combination of the elements turns the environment in almost a living being that surrounds you, everything is alive, everything has a function. In some cutscenes, like when we drink the famous ayahuasca tea, Green Hell performs a combination of colors to represent Yamahuaca culture, with rock painting showing how the white man’s culture devastate the indigenous society, they are well done and interest the player to reestablish the peace between Jake and these people, fulfilling the game’s mission.

Putting this together, surviving in the forest is a complicated quest, imagine that is night and your vision field is limited, yes, the creator didn’t have mercy. During the night, with a detailed environment, is possible to recognize dangers, running through the woods can be a bad idea but sometimes is necessary to run away from a jaguar or a warrior, because of this, the game delivers a complete survival experience, in a Bear Grylss style, but with more difficulty and even better entertainment.

Green Hell is available for Switch, PC, Xbox One and PS4.