Green Hell - first impressions

Green Hell is a title that may not have caught everyone's ears, which is a pity, because the debut production of the native Creepy Jarod studio on August 29th is in the Early Access phase on Steam, where it enjoys a lot of interest. Three weeks after its release, the game sold 67,000 copies. There will still be time to open the champagne, because the creators still have a lot of work to do, but already now he can see the potential of Green Hell.
The fact that Green Hell has a chance to compete with the most popular survival products available on the market is of course not a coincidence. The team founded by former Techland employees, who for many years have been working on the biggest studio hits, such as Dying Light or Dead Island, is responsible for the whole thing. Now they decided to start their own business and prepare an action game from the perspective of the first person in the Amazon jungle. It's a very unfriendly place, so it's no wonder the most important goal of Green Hell is to stay alive.

So far, Green Hell does not offer a complete feature mode (this one will be available when the game is officially released), but only the seed of what awaits us while we go through the campaign. We can read a few chapters that serve as a tutorial. At the very beginning the boat with Mia, the beloved of the main character, Jake, reaches the shore, and from dialogues we learn that the couple came to the Amazon jungle to find members of a certain tribe.

Before the actual part of the game starts, or rather does not start, because the whole thing stops at the least appropriate moment, we have to go through this tutorial, which in terms of explaining each nuance of the game fulfills its task in 100%, but requires a lot of polishing in terms of relations between our heroes. When she tries to get out of the boat, he decides to find shelter. When she sleeps in a tent, he tries to start a fire. Once they can warm up, it's easy to notice that the relationship between Jake and Mia is not perfect. She sits opposite him, but at a very safe distance (vide screen). He doesn't do anything about it, although he says he loves her... This can only prove one thing: in fact, even the initial phase of the story is not fully implemented and in time, however, the female character will be properly animated. Let's hope so.

It should be so, because Jake has an incredibly difficult task to do. After a few days of banging a machete into trees and doing other similar activities characteristic of survival games, the action jumps a month ahead. Then we learn that something really bad is going on with Mia, and we will probably have to go looking for a woman. Of course, it won't be easy, but we can already see that Green Hell in feature mode will be able to bring players to the screen. We don't know yet how much, but I bet that it should take about a dozen or so hours to complete the whole thing. However, the fun will not end there, because the game already offers a fully fledged survival variant, where we do not have any assigned task, but we have to do everything to survive. There are also available optional challenges, i.e. additional missions, in which we have to, for example, make a bonfire before the plane appears or build a powerful camp serving as a shelter.

Green Hell is based on well-known assumptions, but there are some interesting solutions. The map itself may not be very large, but at the beginning you can even get the impression that the shared area is too small. However, this is only a pretence, because in fact, many places look very similar to each other, and running away from numerous threats, you can simply go round and round in circles. It's not worth eating something suspicious, because you can get poisoned. Drinking water without boiling it is also not a good idea. When we get a rash, we should also do something about it quickly, otherwise we can die quickly. The same is true when we catch a fever, because it leads to a slow loss of life points of the main character. We can try to stall and get some sleep, but usually when we wake up, our protagonist will simply die, and this will be accompanied by a spectacular fall animation.

Interestingly, in Jake's tutorial, he tries to climb a rope on a rock but falls from a high altitude. From the menu, you should then select the inspection option to carefully inspect the individual parts of your body, selecting them from a special menu on the screen and turning your limbs until you see a scratched hand, for example. It's a very interesting idea, although turning the limbs at times looks funny. Anyway, after the mentioned fall we learn how to deal with the wound. So we look for molinery leaves and create a basic dressing. Such information, as well as many others, with time goes to a notebook.

Speaking of crafting, it is worth noting that the production of objects takes place in two ways. You can simply drag an object (e.g. a bonfire or a shelter) from a notebook and place it in the right place on the map, and then, according to the guidelines, add various elements to it, including sticks or leaves. Another solution is to familiarize yourself with the contents of the notebook. For example, we can learn that the auger for firing up will be made from a combination of a small and a large stick. When you have such items at your disposal you have to open your backpack, then put them on a stone and click the button responsible for creating the items. At first it's hard to catch on to, but in the end it looks really interesting. Especially since all the things in this backpack are perfectly organized, so there's no problem finding them.

Fighting enemies in Green Hell is a bonus for now, but we can still send a few silents to that world with a machete or a spear, which is actually the members of the tribe that we decided to look for. We will probably learn a little more about them only during the course of the campaign, but here and there we will find notes presenting sparse information about people living in the Amazon jungle.

The last element to mention is Jake's watch, which allows us to quickly check the level of hydration, hunger and fatigue of the main character, as well as use the compass function to facilitate orientation in the field. This is a useful gadget, especially since the game sometimes requires us to go in a certain direction, but the creators did not foresee the presence of a mini-map. And believe me, even in a small area it's easy to get lost, which I've already written about. Besides, in Green Hell our protagonist may become crazy (you have to take care of his mental condition), which will be manifested by a drop in the appropriate coefficient and hallucinations.

Green Hell may not cause the jaw to drop just after starting, but the graphics can be very appealing. The same is true of the game, which, as for this stage of Early Access, can provide several hours of exciting fun and arouse appetite for more. We already know that Creepy Jar intends to release regular updates (see the schedule above), and the full version is announced in the spring of next year. After what I have seen, I can confidently say that there is something to look forward to. The game does not introduce a revolution, but has interesting mechanics, intriguing storyline and decent visuals.