The first time a mutant dropped from the canopy and landed three feet from my face, I flinched so hard I knocked over a water bottle I didn’t even know was there. That was minute twelve. By minute forty, I was crouched in a bush with a crafted spear, watching two pale figures patrol a campfire, and I realized something: The Forest doesn’t just work in VR. In places, it belongs there.
Endnight Games added VR support to The Forest as a free update in mid-2018, shortly after the game left Early Access. The entire game is playable in VR — campaign, crafting, building, co-op, the whole thing. Motion controls handle bow aiming, throwing flares, lighting molotovs, and chopping trees. Your inventory and survival book are rendered in 3D space. There’s physical crouching, finger tracking on Index controllers, and haptics that rumble when you grip an item or land a hit. For a studio that had spent four years polishing a flat survival game, the VR integration was surprisingly thorough.
Here’s the thing, though: the last VR-specific patch was September 2019. Over five years ago. The game still launches in VR through SteamVR, still recognizes your controllers, still lets you play the full experience. But there’s been no new VR content, no quality-of-life updates, no adjustments for newer headsets. What you’re getting is a time capsule — a solid 2019 VR port that Endnight moved on from when Sons of the Forest became their focus.
The strengths are real, and they matter. Bow aiming with motion controls feels excellent — drawing back the string, lining up a shot on a distant cannibal, releasing. Throwing flares by snapping the top off first, then hurling them into dark cave openings. Lighting molotovs with your lighter held in the other hand. These aren’t bolted-on gimmicks; they’re interactions that make sense in the medium. The 3D inventory and survival book work well enough that going back to a flat UI feels like a downgrade. And the caves — god, the caves. In VR, the tight rock passages and sudden vertical drops create a claustrophobia that flat screens can’t touch. The mutants at scale are genuinely disturbing. Endnight was right when they said the creatures “take on a new life.”
But the weaknesses stack up, and some of them are dealbreakers depending on your setup. Performance is the big one. The Forest’s dense forest environment — dynamic weather, day-night cycles, multiple enemies, player-built structures — pushes hardware hard. In VR, that translates to dropped frames, reprojection, and moments where the world stutters right as you’re trying to aim a bow or flee from three cannibals. Mid-range systems will feel it. Budget builds will struggle. You’ll be dialling settings back, and even then, dense areas or multiplayer sessions can chug.
Comfort is another hurdle. This is free-movement survival horror with jump scares, dark environments, and sudden enemy encounters. There’s no teleport option to speak of. If smooth locomotion in first-person VR makes you queasy, The Forest will test you fast. The cave sections are especially rough — tight spaces, disorienting drops, and the occasional moment where the camera clips geometry because the game wasn’t originally built with head-mounted collision in mind.
Controls are mostly solid but show their age. The rebuilt input hint system from the 2019 patch helps, but rebinding can still be finicky depending on your headset. Some interactions — placing building pieces, managing the quick-select system, certain inventory operations — feel like flat-game logic wearing VR gloves. Not broken, but not seamless either. And while multiplayer co-op works in VR, it was a late addition and never got the refinement it deserved. Sync issues, host-dependent stability, and the fact that your flat-screen friends are playing a different-feeling game can dampen the experience.
So who is this actually for?
If you own The Forest already and have a PCVR setup that can handle it, the VR mode is a no-brainer to try. It’s free, it’s the full game, and the atmospheric highs are genuine. Horror fans who want survival-crafting depth in VR will find more to do here than in most dedicated VR survival titles. The building system alone — erecting log cabins, setting traps, fortifying against night raids — has a tactile satisfaction in VR that flat screens can’t match.
On the other hand, if you’re buying The Forest specifically for VR, weigh the tradeoffs carefully. This isn’t a native VR title with ongoing support. It’s a 2018 flat game with a 2019 VR update that the developer has left behind. Performance issues, abandoned support status, and comfort challenges mean it won’t be for everyone.
The Forest in VR is a bit like finding an old trail map for a hike you still want to take. The path is still there. The views are still incredible. But nobody’s maintaining it anymore, and you’ll need better boots than you used to.