The Forest Quartet

This is one of those games I wish I could give a neutral review, but I did enjoy my experience so I’ll give it a recommendation. The art direction is very nice and the music is great. However, there’s not quite enough gameplay to call it a “game” and not enough depth for it to be an interactive story. It’s sort of a walking simulator with light interactions occasionally. There are “enemies” in some levels but they can’t actually hurt you. For each level, you follow a fairly linear path through a portion of the forest, meaning to represent each of the living band members. Puzzles are pretty easy. There were a couple that weren’t immediately intuitive for me, but they weren’t especially hard to figure out. There’s a visual theme to each level which I think is meant to represent their particular struggle/ feelings, but I don’t think that was communicated especially well. The story is where it fell the shortest for me. A puzzle-ish adventure about a band mourning the loss of a member sounds great on paper. However, it was an extremely short introduction to the premise and it didn’t do much to establish how close the group was or meaningfully address how each living member was impacted by Nina’s death. Each level starts with you looking through a window and seeing the person is sad but…that’s kinda it. There’s a few lines of dialogue in each level, but it doesn’t do enough to build the character out. I would have liked to see more background history. It would have created more meaning with each persons loss of Nina and would have made me more invested in the characters. It just felt very shallow. For the gameplay, I didn’t mind the short game length or simpler puzzles. I wasn’t going in expecting anything super deep with the game play. But honestly the story falling short highlighted the simpler game play. I feel like there were unfinished aspects as well. Throughout all the maps are lamp posts you can turn on. This doesn’t seem to have any actual purpose though. Maybe this is tied to an achievement that was never implemented (the game has none) or maybe there was so planned extra level or task, but there wasn’t anything to suggest that when I finished the game, so I don’t know. I got the game on a deep sale, and would recommend it if you see an 80%+ discount. It’s not amazing but it’s definitely not bad either. For $2 and a little over an hour, it’s enjoyable. I just wish there was more emotional depth and character development. Don’t go in expecting some deep emotionally impactful story or advanced gameplay, but if you want a chill game you can finish in one sitting with an okay story, you’ll be happy.

This is short and simple but very relaxed and enjoyable. This is the first time that Bedtime Digital Games published a game that they didn't develop. It definitely feels in line with their other releases from a creative standpoint.

Short little adventure with beautiful scenes, music and touching storyline.