Dark Forest: Lost Story VR

'Dark Forest: Lost Story VR' is a slightly interactive horror story of which there are two main stories to enjoy. The first one is about 'Baba Yaga', you get told a short story in Russian, with English text, then you go on a 20minuet or so adventure with jump-scares and a small amount of interactivity. Sadly the 2nd story called 'Killers Creepers' is not ready yet, so you only have the one for now. But 'Baba Yaga' isn't terrible at all. It looks good, has a few soft jump-scares and is pretty easy to play. I can see this going down well at a Halloween party for kids. I really didn't mind it at all, for just £3.99 you get a good looking game that does only have one story to enjoy for now, but if that 2nd story doesn't get launched I would consider not giving this the thumbs up, but I will trust that it does.

Experienced on the Oculus Quest 2

You can view my review & gameplay here: https://youtu.be/r9lO-ZJu9Og

This is a horror game for VR that currently only has 1 of 2 story chapters available. The story of Baba Yaga can be split up into three different parts, plus the intro. Whole thing took me approximately 1 hour, but I took the scenic route (which leads to many deaths unfortunately). I think you can easily finish this game in 30 minutes otherwise.

The intro is just really walking from point A to point B while some scary stuff happens. The first part is simply figuring out how to get through the level (finding the key and where to use it) and you may come across the Baba Yaga and she will kill you if you don't escape. The second part is mostly chasing sequences where you have to find enough obects hidden within the areas. The last part is a horror stealth section where you have to figure out the patrols of enemies who hear very well, but can't see.

The game is running on the Unity Engine. On my RTX 3080, I was getting mostly 90 frames per second on Ultra graphical settings. However, I did have a few dips in frame rates here and there. You do have full locomotion and smooth turning, but there aren't any other options. Unfortunately, it's gaze-based direction so you're always moving in the direction you're looking at and the smooth turning is a bit too slow. The normal walking speed is also too slow, but luckily you can run. I did get stuck in the terrain quite a bit, but only momentarily, nothing game-breaking, just annoying. You also get automatic save points.

I did enjoy this game. The visuals were pretty good and the sound work, especially on the stealth sections, was done pretty well with spatial audio. The VOs were in Russian (I believe) but you do have texts in English. As far as criticisms, I didn't think the gameplay was all that inventive and a bit too mundane. I also think some of the assets used were stuff I have seen in other VR games. However, the game is well put together so it wasn't a big deal to me personally.

Rate 6/10. The developer says the second story will be released in 10 days. We shall see. In the meantime, I think for budget horror game, it's not bad as is currently. Better than the average VR horror game for sure.

Please note: I received a free Steam key through the Steam Curator Connect program. You can join my Steam Curator group here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Oculus_WMR

Got stuck on a tree, spent 10 mins trying to free myself, and was unsuccessful. At least it was cheap and it looks decent.