Five nights in The Forest: A virtual survival diary

He’s wearing nothing but a loincloth. I can’t tell if he is painted grey with mud or whether that is the colour of his skin. I don’t have much time to deliberate on this point, because he leaps at my throat. I don't think he's after a kiss, and that would be inappropriate anyway, so I swing the axe at him, catching him in the side. He grunts, stumbles, but advances again. I keep swinging, fending him off in an increasingly panicked manner. It takes several hits before he finally collapses, doing a fair amount of damage to me in the process.

I look at my hands. They’re covered in blood again. A brutal and grim end to my first day in the Forest. I really hope he didn't just want a kiss. With my energy levels approaching zero, I crawl into the shelter, and sleep.

Day Two:

I wake up hungry. I ate all the snack bars during the shelter construction yesterday. Fortunately, there are plenty of edibles in the forest, from berries to animals such as rabbits and lizards. I consider building some traps, but I find that the animals are so abundant in the forest that I can simply run up to one and dispatch it with my axe. I suppose this is a good thing, but it feels a little too easy and makes traps redundant. A tweak of the spawning algorithms wouldn't go amiss.

I spend the rest of the day exploring my immediate surroundings, first searching for a source of water. Not because I'm thirsty, oddly, but because it seems being covered in blood all the time isn’t particularly beneficial to your health, and I need to clean it off. Eventually I stumble across the coastline, and have a good soak in the sea. On the way back I stumble across what looks like a village, a series of triangular wooden structures with sharply sloping roofs. I consider exploring it, but along the perimeter I discover something that makes me rethink that plan.

I think I know where that man came from now, and I suspect he isn't the only one out here.

My suspicions are confirmed that afternoon, when upon returning to my camp I am confronted by two more of these strange tribesmen, a man and a woman this time. Despite now outnumbering me, this time around they are much more hesitant in attacking. They advance then retreat, growling at me in a strange dialect. When they finally attack, they do so cleverly, flanking me from either side. This fight is even closer than the last, but again I manage to come out on top, killing the woman and driving the man away into the trees.

No doubt he'll be back again, and with more buddies in tow. But there isn't much I can do about it right now. I must rest.

Day Three:

I need to move camp. The tribesmen clearly know where I am, and the nearby plane wreckage makes it an easy location to spot. I use the first hour of the morning to hunt rabbits, and then set off into the woods.

I find a potential site on top of a rocky outcrop just past the trees’ edge. I can get a good view of my surroundings, and the tribesmen can only come at me from one side. However, it’s also exposed, and if they come at me in numbers, I’ll have no chance of escape. I move on.

Deeper into the forest, I come across an area strewn with the corpses of tribespeople. I have no idea what killed them, but I figure whatever it is might dissuade them from coming here. It’s a risk, but I decide to set up camp, and this time I surround my shelter with standing torches, hoping the fire will further give them pause when approaching.

Unfortunately my assumptions are incorrect. They come again that night, and this time there are five of them.