Interviews
‘The Forest’ Devs On Open-World Survival Horror
Written by T. Blake Braddy, @blakebraddy
The Forest is kind of like MineCraft as written by Lucio Fulci and designed by Crytek. In it, players crash-land on a vast and beautiful landscape covered with trees, flowers…and cannibals. To survive, players must build shelters, develop weapons, and hunt for food, not to mention avoid or deter the multitude of threats that surround them in this open world. The game looks beautiful, and the enemies are not run-of-the-mill people eaters, which gives this bright, exotic landscape an ominous, LOST-ish feel.
It is in an early alpha stage, so there’s plenty to be fixed, but the team working on The Forest is committed to developing a surreal, creepy, yet varied experience. Michael Mellor, Ben Falcone, and Anna Terekhova of Endnight Games gave some great and cryptic answers as to where The Forest is headed and how it will change as the game reaches its final release form.
BD: The game is in Early Access. Clearly you have a vision for where you want it to go. What would you like for the final product of The Forest to look like? What changes to the world, environment, and game complexity will you be implementing?
We wanted to release a base that showed what our vision is for the game. We plan on opening up more areas of the world to explore, more caves that go deeper and deeper. As well we will be adding more wildlife and revealing more mutants.
Things like sound design, improved graphics and performance, deeper simulation aspects and more things to build and construct will all be added over the course of the alpha. There are also a few big surprises we have in store and not yet ready to reveal.
BD: Is anything big being developed right now that you are adding soon that players would be really interested to know?
We have a lot of really cool stuff in the works. Along with bug fixing we also want to release some cool new things with each update. We haven’t revealed everything yet but we have a pretty solid roadmap. The current plan is to release every two weeks or for the bigger updates, every month. The first update is coming in a few days. (June 16th)
BD: How long do you plan on being in the alpha / beta stages of development?
Our current plan is to aim to have the final ready in six months. However as the game develops we will get a much clearer picture. There are a lot of features and improvements we want to make and don’t plan on releasing final until we, and the community really feel it’s ready.
BD: I read on the Steam page that a team of only four people created this game. How long have you been working on it, and how did you manage to create something so visually interesting in that period of time?
Most of the team has been working on the game for over a year now. We have also made use of some very talented freelance artists and coders from around the world.
BD: Plenty of games in this subgenre of survival sim focus on a very simple aesthetic, or stylized retro-ish graphics. The Forest, on the other hand, is going full tilt on the visual side of things. What prompted that decision?
We have always wanted to see how far we can go with graphics. Coming from a VFX background we knew we could create something really interesting.
BD: Tell me a little bit about the people who live around the crash site. Where did the inspiration come from to use cannibals as a complicating, dangerous element?
The inspiration for the cannibals came from 80’s Italian cannibal films. We wanted a smart enemy who could climb trees, mourn their dead and in general be an interesting threat in the world.
This isn’t the 80’s anymore, and so we didn’t think we could get away with a native cannibal threat such as in the traditional cannibal film, and so instead created a mutated human concept, we haven’t revealed exactly who they are but over the course of the alpha as more of the cave systems are opened up, who they are and what they’re doing in the world should start to become clear.
BD: I didn’t get very deep into the game – I need to work on my survival skills! – so could you talk also about how the inhabitants play into a larger mythology of the world, or is that being kept secret?
We don’t want to reveal too much about the inhabitants and how they connect to the world. Its something we want players to form their own ideas about as they explore more and as the alpha progresses. Safe to say however that its a really important focus for us, making the inhabitants feel like they belong and have a history with their environment.
BD: The game includes a “peaceful mode,” so it seems like you also have an interest in making survival situations as deep and interesting as the enemy attacks. What are the different ways players can approach the world in The Forest?
The peaceful mode is going to be the exact same game, just with the enemies turned off. Although we always saw the core game involving enemies, if players want to turn them off they can approach it as a pure survival experience.
BD: Tell us about how co-op will be integrated into the game. How many players will be able to play simultaneously?
We’re hoping to have 2 players to start and possibly build from there. Adding real people to a situation suddenly makes it interesting in a completely different way and it’s something we’re excited to explore more.
BD: Has anything surprised you about how people are playing the game, versus how you imagined people would be playing it? Does that affect how you tweak player experience?
Its been really awesome to see the different playthroughs on YouTube. there has been a surprising amount of strategies used by different players. We did not expect players to be so fascinated about killing seagulls on a yacht, for example.
BD: How has fan support helped keep the team focused? What sorts of suggestions have been most helpful in steering you in the Alpha phase?
Its been really great getting feedback for the game. Everyone is very enthusiastic and it really helps motivate us. We have had tons of ideas and suggestions emailed to us. Right now the most helpful things have been people providing us with detailed bug reports so we can go in and fix them properly.
BD: There is certainly combat in The Forest, but survival is obviously the main component of gameplay. Do you think gamers’ tastes are shifting slowly away from destruction as a means for entertainment?
We think the combat and survival are both essential components of the game. You need the threat of violence and destruction to build tension from the peaceful moments when you’re exploring or crafting. That said, it would be entirely possible to build a great experience purely around survival, its just not the focus of our game.
BD: Similarly, what do you think open-world survival games have to say about the concept of making your own play, rather than being compelled to do what the developers have laid out as “necessary?”
Giving the player freedom gives them a lot more possibilities in what the gameplay is in the world. Open world games also have lots of potential to create real tension/horror, as you’re not on a linear path the player can feel genuinely disoriented and unsure what may happen at any moment.
BD: What is the plan for Oculus Rift integration? Do you have plans to port it to Mac or release it on consoles at any point?
We are planning on releasing an Oculus update soon. There are still a few things we need to work out before it is ready for the public. Regarding Mac, at the moment we are a very tiny team so our main focus is the PC version. Once that is complete we will look into putting it on other platforms
Interviews
“I Don’t See Retiring from This” – Joe Bob Briggs Talks New “Last Drive-In” Format and the Show’s Future [Interview]
Hey everybody, have you heard the news? Joe Bob is back in town!
The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs has returned for its sixth season on Shudder. While the show’s format has been slightly revised — adopting a new biweekly schedule with one film instead of a double feature — the beloved horror host’s approach is much the same.
“It didn’t really change anything,” Briggs tells Bloody Disgusting. “We were crowding all of our movies into 10 weeks once a year and then having specials, and we found that people would rather have more weeks. It’s actually more movies than we had before.
“And some of the people on the East coast fall asleep in the second movie,” he laughs. “It’s about a five-hour show when it’s a double feature because we talk so much. Also, it’s hard to get thematic double features every single time. So our specials are still double features, but our regular episodes are single features.”
The season kicked off last week with The Last Drive-In Live: A Tribute to Roger Corman, celebrating the legendary filmmaker’s first 70 years in Hollywood with a double feature of 1959’s A Bucket of Blood and 1983’s Deathstalker. The special was filmed live in front of a fervent audience of Briggs’ fan base — lovingly dubbed the Mutant Family — at Joe Bob’s Drive-In Jamboree in Las Vegas last October.
In addition to his usual hosting duties, Briggs conducted a career-spanning interview with Corman and his wife, fellow producer Julie Corman. They were also joined by one of Corman’s oldest friends and collaborators, Bruce Dern. In a heartfelt moment of mutual admiration, Briggs and Corman exchanged lifetime achievement awards on hubcaps.
“I’ve known Roger for about 35 years, so I’ve only known him for half of his career,” Briggs chuckles. In his long history of reviewing, interviewing, and talking about Corman and his legendary work, one emblematic encounter sticks out to Briggs.
“I remember the very first time I went to the Corman studio, which was a lumber yard on Venice Boulevard. He had a standing set for a spaceship control room, a standing set for a strip club, and I think he had one other one, and then he had all of his editing facilities there, but it was still a lumber yard. They had not really changed any of the buildings or anything.
“He’s showing me around the studio, and we were walking past a pile of debris, and I said, ‘Roger, is that the mutant from Forbidden World?’ It had just been thrown over in a corner. And he just said, ‘Yes, Joe Bob, I believe that is. He was apparently no longer needed.’ I said, ‘Roger, you gotta get with it! That stuff is worth money.’ But he was like, ‘When the movie’s over, the movie’s over.’ That was Roget to a T.”
At least part of Corman’s longevity can be attributed to his shrewd business practices and pragmatic approach to the industry, which has included working in every conceivable genre of cinema. “I couldn’t think of a single genre he has not made,” Briggs says.
“When we did this interview at the Jamboree, I said, ‘I’m gonna name the genre, and you tell me what you love about that genre,’ and every comment that he made involved money and box office performance,” he snickers. “None of it was involved with love of cinema, although I did get him to say that his favorite genre is a genre that he didn’t dabble in much other than his first movie [1954’s Highway Dragnet], and that was film noir.”
While the fourth annual Drive-In Jamboree is still in the planning stage, Briggs is delighted by the event’s continued success. “The Jamboree is something that we literally just threw together. We’ve had three of them now. It’s something where we just show up and try to come up with programming for each day.
“But I really think the Jamboree is more about the mutant family meeting the mutant family. It’s more about people who know each other online gathering and partying with each other in person. It’s not so much about what movies we have. I mean, we always have an anniversary movie, and we always have some special guests and everything, but it’s more about the gathering of the mutants. It’s fun from that point of view. They’re exhausting, I can tell you that.”
The zeal among Briggs’ audience has only grown over the years, from hosting Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater on The Movie Channel from 1986 to 1996, to MonsterVision on TNT from 1996 to 2000, and The Last-Drive-In on Shudder since 2018. “I’m amazed, having been in the business for this many years, that I still have a show at this time, because they say you can’t repeat TV,” Briggs notes.
“Nobody wants to see old TV, and yet I’ve done the same show three times on three different networks, and every time I try to change it everyone says, ‘No, no, don’t change it! That’s the part we love.’ I always want to do something new, and I’m always told, ‘No, you’re the CEO of Coca Cola who went to New Coke.’ You can’t do that. People will revolt. So we’re still doing it.
“It’s one of the few shows that I know of that’s just sort of grown organically over, gosh, almost 40 years. We’ve just added elements to the show. We try things. If something doesn’t work, we throw it away. If something works, we do it forever!”
The mutant family will be happy to know that Briggs plans to continue hosting and writing about movies for as long as he’s able to. “I don’t see retiring from this or retiring from writing. I’m primarily a writer, and the good thing about writing is long after they don’t wanna see you on TV anymore you can still write.
“The difference today, though, is I was pretty much the only guy doing genre films when I started. Now, there are academics that do it. There are entire books written about Dario Argento and Tobe Hooper and even lesser names than those, and there are, of course, a massive number of websites, including your own, so that when something comes out today, there’s immediately a hundred reviews of it; whereas in 1982, I was sort of the only guy, because the movies were considered disposable trash. So I have been surpassed in my deep knowledge, because who can keep up with all that? It’s impossible!”
Diana Prince, who serves as Briggs’ co-host Darcy the Mail Girl and was instrumental in getting him back in the hosting chair, has been promoted to an associate producer this season. “She was sort of always the associate producer, but I guess they finally gave her the title,” Briggs explains.
“Diana Prince is in on all the decisions about programming. I always listen to Austin Jennings, the director, and Diana Prince, the mail girl, because they come from opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what kind of movies they wanna watch, and we try to strike a balance between. You know, she’s not gonna vote for Possession, and he’s not gonna vote for Mountaintop Motel Massacre,” he chortles.
“They’re probably the principal advisors, as far as what we show. Of course, [Diana] has a lot of social media clout, and she’s extremely knowledgeable about pop culture. Wow! She has seen everything. She’s seen more than I’ve seen!”
While surprises are part of the fun of The Last Drive-In, Briggs previews some of what’s in store this season. “The place we normally live is the neglected ’80 slasher, and we still live there,” he assures. “But we’re gonna pay a lot more attention to the ’70s especially. I’ve always thought the ’70s are more interesting than the ’80s anyway. And we’re gonna pay attention to some really recent stuff.”
He teases, “We’re gonna bring back Joe Bob’s Summer School, which is something that we used to do at MonsterVision. And we may have a marathon. There’s a possibility of that. But I’ll be digging this new format of being on every other week between now and at least up to Labor Day.”
While Briggs’ hosting format hasn’t changed much across four decades, the world around him certainly has — and that’s why The Last Drive-In remains relevant. He points out, “In the era of streaming, where everything is menus and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of choices, we are that thing called a curator that can direct you to the fun places on the spectrum of streaming.
“Streaming is very confusing for people, and a lot of people don’t like it for that reason. I hope what we’re doing is cutting through the weeds and bringing things into perspective. And, you know, it’s just more fun to watch a movie with us!” he concludes with a Texas-sized grin.
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