Green Hell Review – The Forest Is Calling and You Must Go

Realistic survival mechanics have become a popular feature in modern gaming. From ARK to DayZ and even Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2, it’s found a home within the gaming zeitgeist. Chances are you’ve played a game with them, whether it’s the focus or just a pillar within a game’s structure. But one game has done it in a way that turns it up to 11, stressing you out to the max while still letting you have fun with it.

That game is Green Hell, a survival game set in the Amazon rainforest. Developed by Creepy Jar and released on PS4 in 2021, it has cemented itself as a must-play survival game. And with a hefty amount of updates since release, there has never been a better time to give this game a try!

Now, when this title calls itself a survival simulator, it means it. You’ll be tasked with learning to build your shelter, find your food, figure out crafting recipes, and defend against diseases, parasites, predators, and rough weather. If you’ve always imagined how you’d survive stranded in nature, here’s your chance to put yourself to the test. It’s an uphill climb at first, but once you reach the top of the jungle’s mountain, you just may throw yourself back down for more.

Story

Before I dive in, I have a confession. I didn’t read too far into this game before I began this review. I hate spoilers, and although this game released in 2021, I managed to avoid them. All I was aware of was how difficult surviving is. But I thought it was just about that: survival. I was so used to survival games with a loose story at most that I didn’t even expect a linear narrative. So, needless to say, when I booted up the game and saw there was a story mode, I was even more intrigued. And as I’ve progressed, I’ve gotten pulled in even further.

When anthropologist Jake Higgins’ wife is diagnosed with a terminal illness, they take a trip to a rainforest to try to find a cure. There were tales of a tribe that has managed to avoid illness for years. With this knowledge, Jake is sure the answer lies with them. All is well within the first few days, but it doesn’t stay that way for long. In a tragic turn of events, Mia goes missing after going to meet with one of the jungle’s tribes. With everything against him, Jake sets out to discover her whereabouts.

To get to her, he must battle the elements, predatory animals, violent tribes, and his own sanity. It’s a tale full of twists, turns, triumph, and tragedy. And that’s all within the first 8 hours. The story is told effectively through isolation, as most of Jake’s interactions with other friendly humans take place through a walkie talkie. Green Hell does more than most would expect in a jungle survival simulator, and the way it’s done has honestly left me in awe. The story alone puts it in my top three survival games I’ve ever played.

Gameplay

The gameplay of this game is the primary selling point of Green Hell. It’s a balancing act of a game, and between the dangers that lurk throughout the jungle and the chaos within the protagonist, it lives up to its name. Everything is out to cut your journey short within the treacherous rainforest. The gameplay can be divided into the usual pillars of survival games, with a few additions. Crafting and building, hunting/gathering and cooking, combat, and disease and health loss management. If you can get the hang of these, you stand a good chance in the wild.

Piecing a Plan Together – Crafting and Building

To get started on your journey, you’re gonna need to make some tools. Combining rocks with one another make stone blades, spears can be made with sticks or stones tied to sticks, leaves can be used to make bandages, etcetera. Structure outlines can be placed where you want to build them, and supplies are placed until a structure has been built. These include storage for supplies, sleeping areas, campfires, and just about everything else you can think of that a good camp would need.

As you build and use your tools, you will level up the skills associated with them. This will allow you to craft items with better durability as well as grant you access to more blueprints to choose from. You can also experiment with different combinations of resources to build tools, which allows for some fun elements of player freedom. This helps make even the baby steps feel massive when you’re learning how to maximize your lifespan in the wild.

Living Off of the Land – Collecting and Cooking Food

After you’ve built some tools and laid out your plans for a camp, it’s time to start gathering food. Hunting animals is relatively simple: just craft some spears or a bow and arrows, stay stealthy, and get some grub. Plants and fruit however, can be a little more dangerous. Although Jake is a botanist, most plants he encounters are unfamiliar. This means you may have to go through some trial and error to know what is safe and beneficial or downright deadly.

Thankfully, any tested plant’s effects and possible benefits are listed in your journal. A cool addition to the way this works is you can name them to make keeping up with what’s what a little easier. Beware though, as food poisoning is a very real thing, and it can be hard to take care of. Water even has a high level of detail when it comes to its use. Most water you come across is dirty and contaminated, so to stay hydrated you’ll have to learn how to collect and boil it for purification. If you choose to haphazardly drink that pond water that hasn’t moved in decades, be prepared for sickness and possible parasites. It’d be a shame to die because you decided to sip out of the local animal toilet without precaution.

Fight for Your Life, Literally – Combat

So you’ve built a safe haven from the weather and gathered enough food. Congratulations, you’re halfway there. But halfway isn’t sufficient in the jungle. Hopefully, you crafted some weapons while you were busy because there are more violent dangers out there. You never know when you’re being stalked by a leopard, waiting for a chance to attack.

The combat in Green Hell is about what one would expect, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Most confrontations will come down to the player panicking while jabbing or slashing at whatever is trying to kill them. Sometimes, you’ll be more prepared and be able to get the drop on enemies before they find you. But in the early game, that’s almost a pipedream. You’ll find yourself in a lot of sticky situations, underprepared and overwhelmed. And when the dust settles, it’s still not over.

I Need a Medic – Disease and Health Loss

As I’ve lightly touched on before, every decision you make has a chance to do damage beyond the surface. Fights, wading in or drinking water, eating the wrong food, everything can cause some serious damage. This is in the form of wounds, infections, sickness, and parasites. It’s a big component of the gameplay, and really helps Green Hell stand out. You’ll be constantly checking your limbs for worms, patching up wounds with bandages, and using plants to fight infection and disease. And during it all you’ll also be tasked with maintaining your sanity, literally.

Not taking care of problems in a timely manner can lead to a myriad of worse ones, with one of the worst is losing your mind. Going without sleep, letting parasites stay in your body, and pretty much everything else can lead to insanity. When you reach this point, you’ll see visions of tribesmen trying to murder you along with other, more symbolic imagery. It can be reversed, but it’s usually best to not let it get that far.

All of this is just the tip of the iceberg of what to expect within the game’s world. But like with crafting your tools, learning more is part of the experience. And that experience is an addicting one.

Graphics and Sound

For a game that was released on the PS4 in 2021, the graphics are amazing. Honestly, they’re amazing on their own. The dense greenery that covers the forest floor looks amazing, and the lighting is really impressive. It’s easy to get lost in the game’s world with how nice it looks. And with new updates consistently arriving, it just keeps getting better, both graphically and content-wise.

The sound is just as engaging. Ambient sounds like the birds and running water can bring you a moment of peace amongst the chaos. But the sound of a creature stalking you can easily break that moment in a heartbeat. When insanity starts to set in, the ambient sounds become nightmarish. Voices try to break you, attempting to convince you that they’re real. Whispers will make you turn around in fear to realize you’re still alone. If you weren’t panicking before, they’d change that really quickly. It’s always a pretty intense experience, and I love every second.

Replayability

One thing Green Hell shares with its peers is high replay value. Once you finish the story mode, there’s a prequel story you can play through, and the survival mode that goes on as long as you want it. That’s enough for an extra hundred hours of gameplay in itself. And if that isn’t something you’re interested in, you may be happy to hear there’s more than one ending. So you’re likely to at least give the story mode another playthrough, likely on a harder difficulty. The difficulty options alone will bring most back for multiple playthroughs. It’s chock full of new things to discover and experience, and any survival game fan will find more than plenty to do here.

Conclusion

Green Hell is a must play for fans of survival games. Its immersive atmosphere, detailed health and crafting systems, and engaging story come together to show just how deep a survival game can go. There’s plenty to do, a lot to learn, and loads of fun to be had. And if you’re not into survival games, you can edit every part of the difficulty to your liking. This title far exceeded my expectations, which were already pretty high. If you’re debating on giving this game a go, this is your sign. You won’t be disappointed!