Solo Developer Releases FMV Survival Game Wordless Forest After Spending 40 Days in the Wilderness

Solo developer Dogus Cagrici has officially released Wordless Forest on Steam. The unique title is a full-motion video (FMV) survival game that Cagrici filmed while hiking through the dense forests and wilderness of four different cities across Turkey over a span of 40 days.

As a dialogue-free experience, Wordless Forest features Cagrici himself playing the role of a survivor who wakes up alone in the wild with a head injury and scrambled memories. The primary objective is to navigate to a distant firewatch tower while making critical survival choices along the way. Players are presented with simple either/or options on-screen, such as deciding whether to eat potentially unsafe food from an abandoned campsite, exploring dark caves for shelter, or choosing to track a missing dog versus heading straight to safety.

The game is a relatively short experience, with a full runthrough taking about 45 minutes. Early user reviews on Steam have been mixed, largely because the game offers lean interactivity and functions more like a short interactive movie. Despite this, the game stands out for its high production effort given its solo-developer origins; Cagrici handled the filming himself, capturing footage of himself climbing cliffs, exploring caves, and eating raw fish to bring the survival scenario to life.

Wordless Forest is currently available on Steam, where it is launched with a 10% discount available for its first two weeks on sale.