Heart of the Forest is the Perfect Game For 2026

Heart of the Forest is the Perfect Game For 2026

Low-key horror in a mundane setting? That’s game of the year material right there.

Wales Interactive has arguably done more to revitalize the full-motion video game genre than any other developer on the planet. Long thought to have gone extinct with the advent of 3D accelerators capable of rendering kinda-realistic humans, the FMV had its heyday in the early 1990s and then almost completely vanished. But you still see them from time to time, existing in peace alongside visual novels and whatever Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties was.

The Wales Interactive line has modernized the FMV adventure concept. High-definition digital cameras and digital editing goes a long way toward making human actors on live film a viable format for adventure games, and Wales smartly sticks to grounded settings and themes in their output. For example, The Bunker was essentially a “bottle episode” of a television show, taking place almost entirely in a single closed location, while The Shapeshifting Detective consisted of monologues by characters sitting in front of the camera intercut with snippets of footage from relevant scenes. More than simply budget-friendly production choices, Wales’ approach also has the side effect of centering the focus of those games entirely on the narrative and player choices.

The latest Wales release, Heart of the Forest for PlayStation 5, continues the studio’s approach while also delivering a narrative experience that fits perfect into the zeitgeist of 2026. Atmospheric, location-based horror has been all the rage this year in Hollywood, with the likes of Backrooms and Obsession punching far about their weight class against blockbuster studio fare. Heart of the Forest feels very much of a piece with those films while evolving the Wales Interactive house style.

Set in an eerie forest in the dead of night, as well as some adjacent locations including caves and abandoned structures, Heart of the Forest follows the harrowing experience of a group of students who find themselves lost and cursed when their guide mysteriously vanishes. Despite the woodland setting and the dark ambiance, Heart of the Forest doesn’t involve chases by wild-eyed psychopaths, disfigured murderers, or any of those hoary old 1980s horror clichés. It’s a tale of psychological horror, and each character must confront and overcome their own insidious demons. Like that tree on Dagobah, Heart of the Forest’s terrors are only what you take with you.

Will the protagonists survive and flourish, or will they succumb to the darkness that haunts them? That’s really down to you. After all, Heart of the Forest belongs to the interactive adventure genre. It may play out through full-motion video, but players determine the outcome of the story with the choices they make along the way... and certainly some endings play out happier than others.

Heart of the Forest is available as a physical edition preorder through August 16. Don’t miss out on the most 2026-coded video game ever.