Forest Grove

It is difficult to pigeonhole upcoming mystery game Forest Grove cleanly into a single genre. While some might at first glance classify the game as an “adventure” title, and other (perhaps less kind) gamers might put Forest Grove into the “walking simulator” category, there is more going on with this game than meets the eye. Sure, there are plenty of puzzle elements to poke at in Forest Grove, and the game does take place in a big sprawling home (like Gone Home, or What’s Become of Edith Finch). But there is also an intriguing narrative to uncover beneath the surface of Forest Grove, a tale of a shattered family, and greed, and…well…I’m not sure, because I’ve only played the opening hour of the game.

Also separating this game from the crowd is it's intriguing conceit. Forest Grove wraps its mystery in a fun layer of science fiction. Instead of directly wandering through the house in question, players are instead exploring a reconstruction of the home on a Nanodeck (think Star Trek TNG’s Holodeck, but instead built from the collective data from millions of swarming nanobots). As the player explores, the come across bits of data that can be reconstructed to show short scenes or audio clips, giving more insight into the mystery at hand.

Zoe Kunstimatigaard (Zoe K. hereafter) has gone missing. The heir to a major tech fortune, Zoe has been waiting out the last six months before her 18^th birthday, when she finally will come into her inheritance after the suicide of her mother and her father’s mysterious untimely death. Staying with Zoe in the family mansion has been her stepmother Mary and a kindly but exhausted housekeeper. Zoe hasn’t been easy to get along with lately. She’s been struggling in school, sneaking around with a questionable boyfriend, and playing girl detective about her father’s death.

Several other suspicious characters have been lurking around the edges of Zoe’s life over the past months. A business partner of her father was acting strangely before his death. Zoe’s boyfriend has a boss that has been insinuating his way into their lives with conspiracy theories and paranoia. And though Mary the stepmom seems kind, she can’t be too happy that Zoe’s dad left all of his world fortune to his only child. Suspects, suspects, everywhere.

As the player explores the house, they uncover more information about Zoe’s family and their past, solving riddles, finding key codes, and combing through electronic records. The cyber aspect of the game is present, but not overblown to the point where it overwhelms the human mystery of Forest Grove.

I spent about an hour combing through the mansion rooms available in the demo provided to Gaming Nexus, and I saw just enough to be intrigued by the rest of the game. There were many tantalizing doors in the house that I was unable to open, but I still managed to solve a few minor puzzles and uncovered enough evidence that I began to form my own (probably dead wrong) theories about what became of Zoe. I'll keep my amateurish opinions to myself, but I'm definitely excited to get my hands on the full game, so I can see just how wrong I was about everything.

Forest Grove, developed by two-man development team Miga Games and published by Blowfish Studios, is scheduled for release in Q3, 2022 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Steam. Keep an eye on Gaming Nexus for more news on this intriguing mystery game as we get closer to release.