Unfortunately, the wheel of time continues to turn. As a result, we and the video games we play continue to get older. If you can believe it, the terrifying, open-world survival title The Forest will be turning 12 years old on May 30, 2026! To celebrate the game's anniversary and spooky legacy, we've assembled 12 of its most memorable moments that make the game so iconic.

Celebrating The Forest's 12th Anniversary: 12 of its Most Memorable Moments

In honor of the 12th anniversary of the horror survival classic The Forest, we'll cover 12 moments from the game that truly stick with players long after they move on. While none of these moments listed below are exactly spoilers for the game's story, they do have information on what you'll experience when playing The Forest. If you've never played it and want to jump in blind, this list might not be for you. However, you can always grab a dedicated server for The Forest and start enjoying a fear-riddled fight for survival with your pals!

The Plane Crash Cinematic

It's a wild start when you boot up The Forest for the first time. You're seated comfortably on a plane with your infant son right next to you. Then, without warning, the plane is thrown for a loop. It's shaking, tearing apart, and crashing to the ground. The next thing you know, your eyes are slowly opening, a creature has your child, and your arms are covered in blood. As you look around, you see nothing but corpses, the plane wreckage, and an eerie forest you're now stranded in. Oh, and your son is missing! Time to find him and keep yourself alive. You've arrived to an island you'll wish you could fly right back from!

Noticing the Cannibals Are Watching You

Your time in the forest starts to blur, and you realize you'll be stuck here for a while. There's still no sign of your son, and definitely no other signs of civilization. In your wandering, you might have occasionally noticed strange things. Morbid decorations scattered throughout the land. Pieces of bone, stick, and even flesh that have been bound together as primitive signs or waypoints. Primitive, clearly manmade, and disturbing. Then, one day, you turn and see them: cannibals. Feral humans who are standing stock still and too close for comfort. You watch them back and notice that they aren't advancing toward you. Not yet. They're simply watching. And waiting. You're not alone in the forest after all, and this is when you first discover that the other inhabitants are mindful of your presence.

Seeing Movement in the Trees

Shortly after you've left the plane behind, you start exploring the woods. The trees are enormous, casting long shadows over the land. You might scout out a nice spot to set up camp. You may even find a small river or lake as a source of water. However, the more time you spend in this forest, the more you start to get the feeling that you aren't alone. The game has an eerie fog that blankets parts of the forest at the edge of your vision. The wind rustles through the trees, making the shadows dance. You might hear some rustling and turn to see nothing more than a deer. Maybe you don't see anything. Or maybe you see something you wish you hadn't. Cannibals take to the trees to scout out survivors, and what may seem like a clustered branch could just as easily be a cannibal watching your every move. This is when you first learn that not all threats to your safety are at eye level.

Realizing Your Behavior Changes Cannibal Behavior

Frightening as they are, the cannibals won't go out of their way to attack you when they first meet you. They'll follow you, they'll stare at you, but they won't try to harm you necessarily. That is, until you give them a reason to. Naturally, they'll fight back if you harm them. However, they'll also become aggressive if they see you chopping down too many trees. If they come around your camp to see a bunch of logs and/or stumps, they'll add you to their menu. To make things worse, a lone cannibal can report on your activity and alert the rest of the clan. Then you're really in trouble. Seeing Cannibals take on new behaviors might be confusing at first, but it's not long before you realize what you do on this island affects how these cannibals act towards you, even getting your first look at the social hierarchy of your newfound frienemies.

Being Out at Night For the First Time

Early on in the game, you can craft yourself a source of light with a torch or use a measly lighter to at least see something at all. You can also make a bed and sleep through the night in your little base to ensure you're well-rested and that the strange noises you keep hearing go unheard for a few hours. However, you'll have to explore more and more of the forest over time. Eventually, you'll be too far from home to make it back before dark. When that happens, all of the noises, the absence of light, and the rustling trees are magnified. Even with a torch in hand, its faint glow, in some ways, makes the thick, soupy darkness feel even freakier.

Losing Your Base to a Mutant Attack

As time goes on, your base is getting better. However, your relationship with the cannibals is only getting worse. They're well aware of your presence now, and they don't like how much of their forest you've been using to build your construction. Eventually, your base will be visited by massive raids. The cannibals and even twisted mutants will throw themselves against your walls, and this may be the time you discover the more powerful sieging mutants like Armsy, who can cleave down structures with ease. You'll have to prepare with fortifications and plenty of weaponry to protect your home. However, there are more cannibals than you think there are, and not all walls can last forever. Losing your base is far from ideal, but in The Forest, it's also expected. Don't worry! You can always rebuild if you manage to make it out of the raids alive.

Entering Your First Cave

What's worse than a dark forest filled with scary cannibals? The tunnels beneath it. There are loads of caves littered around the forest, and they're not always uninhabited. In fact, some of the worst things you can imagine are waiting to be discovered inside. Mutants and cannibals, sure, but you'll only see those if you can stomach their handiwork on your way in. Some caves have remnants of mutilated humans strewn about the floor. Some have piles of mutant corpses. And some feature a twisted sense of cannibal decoration with fingers, heads, and other body parts hanging from the ceiling. Wandering into a cave is always a great way to lose your lunch.

Running Out of Meds in a Cave

Eventually, you'll get the hang of survival and exploration in The Forest. You've got a strong base, you know how to keep yourself fed, and you can defend yourself from the worst of cannibal and mutant threats. However, cave exploration might get the better of you. You'll be exploring the game's vast underground networks, fending off foes, and maybe you'll take a few hits along the way. You start to get low on health, so you open your backpack. Oh no. You've got everything you need except for a way to heal yourself. Wonderful! Now you're miles away from your spawn, stuck underground, surrounded by enemies, and a few blows away from losing all of your gear. We all know how this one turns out.

Your First Time Hearing Virginia

Cannibals are already terrifying, but The Forest has more horrors than that in store. Mutants parade around the land as well, and some are far worse than others. Virginia mutants, for example, are body horror incarnate. The only thing that might be worse than seeing them is hearing them. These amalgamations of twisted human flesh resemble disgusting spiders. And, appropriately, they make a disgusting, squishy chittering noise when they walk, and squeal with angry delight if they spot you and leap to kill you.

Your First Time Seeing Mutant Babies

If the nasty spider beast wasn't bad enough, Mutant Babies are another twisted foe you'll encounter - first in caves, then eventually above ground as well. These mutants travel in packs, and they'll do everything they can to hunt you down. They're small, sure, but they amass in fairly large numbers while flinging themselves at you. Meeting them out in the forest is one thing, but it's even worse when you come upon a cave filled with the freakish things. Even when they're dead, they'll give you a horrible sense of unease with their disgustingly twisted bodies.

Getting to the Bottom of the Sinkhole

Whether through your own curiosity or by following the game's story, eventually you'll make your way to the Sinkhole. This yawning maw is an eerie plunge into the depths of the underground. What's waiting down there? More cannibals? Even worse mutants? Your missing son? You'll have to make your way down to find out. Part of what makes the Sinkhole so terrifying is how hard it is to enter. It's easy to take fall damage when trying to make your way down directly, or you'll have to clear your way through its creepy cave path. and death means starting the eerie descent all over again. You'd better make sure you have a zipline if you actually want to make it down in one piece. Unless you want to try another, unintended, but hilarious method. Speaking of...

Using a Turtle Shell to Its Full Potential

It's probably the least terrifying item on our list of memorable moments (especially if you already know what awaits you at the bottom), but it's certainly one of the game's most unique and memorable! As you can see in the video above, there is one infamous, strange way to enter the Sinkhole in style. That is riding down in a turtle shell. Now, does it always work? No. Sometimes, your turtle shell sliding crusade will end with a big, wet splat as you hit the Sinkhole floor. But when it works, it saves a huge amount of traversal time, and it's a fun thrill flying through the air so quickly. Some players have never been able to pull it off, while others claim to be turtle sliding masters. Want to know if you can pull it off? Simply collect a shell from an unsuspecting turtle, and give it a try!