The Forest Quartet

The Forest Quartet is a story-driven puzzle game, although the puzzles are very simplistic. It's best categorising this game alongside the "walking simulator" type games. It's not strong enough as a puzzle game.

You play as the spirit of Nina, a recently deceased jazz musician. The environment is a dark forest with a fairly eerie atmosphere. I've seen some reviews praise the sound design but it's mainly just abstract noises then a jazzy soundtrack during cut-scenes. I expected more jazz rather than these fleeting moments.

There's some narration from the band members who seem to struggle with mental health issues. There's not much story, it's mainly the usual pretentious aspects you get from these games.

The gameplay is very basic and is there just to give you something more interesting to do. It's often just "find a missing item, bring to a machine and interact with it". You can "sing", "carry", and "interact". You activate some machines just by pressing interact, but others you sing then interact. It works fine with an Xbox Controller and the tutorial prompts were correct from what I remember, but there are Playstation icons in the menu.

Each chapter is set in a different area of the forest and focuses on a different band member, so there are 3 chapters. In the first chapter, you often pick up missing parts, place into machinery, and activate them. In the second, you activate lights and complete circuits. In the third, you turn into butterflies and travel through pipes, as well as elements from the previous chapters.

Another thing you can do is temporarily hover higher. This floating mechanic seems inconsistent though with the height you are expected to reach. In the first area, you need to create lifts to reach high areas, in the second you are expected to float by yourself to higher ledges, then in the third you turn into butterflies but sometimes need a lift and sometimes not.

This is a very short experience and it will take about an hour and a half. Yet 7% make it to the end - judging by Epic Game's achievement list. I thought some areas were a bit dark, meaning it wasn’t as clear where to go. It is arty and pretentious rather than having good gameplay or interesting story.