Green Hell: It’s both green and hellish

*Update – Green Hell is in full release on Steam, as of Sept. 5, 2019. – Ed.

Green Hell is an early access title developed and published by Creepy Jar. It certainly lives up to its name. It is vast, green, lush and vibrant… Also, it is utter Hell to try and survive. While being early access, the tutorial “phase” is an early part of the game’s story.

You find yourself in the Amazonian rain forest with your love interest. First, set up camp while she goes off in search of an isolated tribe. The tutorial leaves off with a cry for help over the radio and you set out to try to save her. Then you launch into a random spot on the map with little guidance or directive other than to survive.

Getting a feeling for Green Hell

The game starts out somewhat familiar if you’ve ever played other survival games like The Forest. The overall mechanics of the game feel well polished, though the game play itself is NOT forgiving. The tutorial has you play through a few tasks, but doesn’t really guide you through “how.” Luckily for me, I had a few new viewers to our stream help me learn the ropes.

Example: some items you can pick up and place in your pack. Other items you cannot, unless you first right click on them and click “harvest” to break them down to size or to their more basic components. Green Hell can be extremely difficult but manages to remain intriguing while it murders you relentlessly.

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Core Mechanics

Green Hell’s human management system goes beyond the simple need to eat, hydrate, and sleep. Eating consists of hunter/gatherer skills that enable you to hunt or locate various food items that will balance the player’s need for Protein, Carbs, Fatty Oils, and Water. Furthermore, the player can contract a number of parasites from things like sleeping on the ground, or drinking from unsafe water sources, or just wandering throughout the brush.

These parasites can affect aspects of the player; the amount of nutrition they receive from eating/drinking, their mental aptitude via sanity and even causing wounds. Of course, no wounded walk in the woods would be complete without infection. You take an injury, and if you don’t manage it, you will get an infection and it will kill you. However, creating bandages, applying maggots to clean a wound, adding herbal medication to your wound and keeping it clean is a matter of life or death. You’ll find biometrics and other helpful information on the wriistwatch.

You can manage to stay fed, hydrated, and injury-free but it’s going to require some work gathering supplies to build tools and shelter. All of your building/tool blueprints and nature data can be found in your survival manual. As you wander around out and about, mind the wildlife. If a snake, spider, scorpion, or jaguar doesn’t kill you, an Amazon bushman probably will.

Take Away

If you’re a fan of the genre of survival games. You might want to pick up this title or at least keep an eye on it to watch its development. Tune in to your favorite streamer and watch the game progress with each update. Be warned – this game can be difficult.

For me. it’s easy mode difficulty feels akin to the hard mode in The Forest. I would love to come back to this game after its story mode is completed and more is added to the game, as it is still early access. I feel Green Hell has the potential to become something spectacular.