The Forest is an open-world survival horror game published in April 2018. Developer Endnight Games created a terrifyingly dark yet beautiful survival experience, which sold over 5.3 million copies. Its highly-anticipated sequel, Sons of the Forest, will be released on February 23 in its Early Access version. But even before launch, Sons of the Forest has already revived fans’ interest in the franchise. We’ve taken a deep dive into the history of The Forest on Twitch and what you can expect from its newest addition.
The history of The Forest
In The Forest, you play as Eric LeBlanc, whose airplane crashed on a remote island. In search of your son Timmy, you must roam this unknown, heavily forested world. Collecting food and building a shelter is crucial on your journey. During this challenging survival experience, you encounter breathtaking waterfalls as well as frightening cannibals. For better immersion, The Forest can be experienced in VR. If you prefer some non-hostile company on the island, you can play with up to eight friends.
The Forest had its official launch in 2018. However, it had already been in Early Access since 2014. Endight Games tinkered on the game for so long that fans weren’t sure if the game would ever see an official release. During these years, The Forest turned from an incomplete Alpha build without a save option into a visually-stunning survival experience. The game quickly became beloved in its niche. Players loved exploring the island's secrets and unleashing their creativity on the building system. By November 2018, The Forest sold over 5.3 million copies, as reported by Game Developer. In addition, it received great reviews on Steam and IGN.
Despite its success in the survival game niche, The Forest never became mainstream in the gaming community. On Steam, it only started slowly growing after the official release, as confirmed by Streamcharts. What’s more surprising is that this growth continues beyond the official launch. In fact, The Forest just recently reached its all-time peak of concurrent players at nearly 75,000 in October 2022. As we approach the launch of Sons of the Forest after its announcement in 2019, more and more players seem to be interested in the franchise.
The Forest on Twitch
The Forest viewership dynamics on Twitch
The Forest is a niche game on Twitch. It currently sits in 107th place of all Twitch categories between Honkai: Star Rail and League of Legends: Wild Rift. However, The Forest has recently seen an impressive boom on the platform. While the game’s average viewership stayed below 2,000 throughout 2022, Average Viewers jumped to nearly 3,000 in January 2023. This was the first time The Forest reached the 3,000 mark since August 2019. In addition, the survival game accumulated over 2 million Hours Watched in the first month of 2023. This is a 146% increase in HW compared to December 2022. We can assume that this sudden hype is due to the upcoming launch of Sons of the Forest.
Several notable streamers also facilitated the Forest’s Twitch hype in 2023. Despite being niche, The Forest is a beginner-friendly survival game that variety streamers can easily pick up. The top The Forest streamer of last month is none other than auronplay. The Spanish streamer has 14.7 million followers thanks to his entertaining variety content. His fans watched him play The Forest for a total of almost 780,000 hours in January. Most importantly, he broke the game’s all-time Peak Viewers record with roughly 131,000 PV.
Most-watched The Forest Twitch streamers in 2022
Last year, the most-watched The Forest streamer was ElMariana. He reached nearly 63,000 Peak Viewers streaming the survival horror game. In total, his viewers watched The Forest for over 1 million hours. El Mariana is a variety streamer from Mexico with 6.8 million Twitch followers. Known for his laid-back, funny personality, he currently streams Just Chatting, Minecraft, and Roblox.
In second place is the French streamer aminematue. His streams accounted for nearly 490,000 of The Forest’s total 7 million Hours Watched in 2022. Nowadays, aminematue streams Just Chatting and various games to his 1.9 million followers. aminematue is closely followed by Japanese creator k4sen, who accumulated only about 90,000 fewer HW than his French colleague. K4sen has built a Twitch following of over 500,000, streaming Zelda, Genshin Impact, and more. However, he’s mostly known for his League of Legends content.
Gaules’ appearance in the top 10 is also noteworthy. His fans watched his The Forest streams for almost 170,000 hours. Nearly 36,000 viewers watched Gaules play The Forest at the channel's peak. Gaules is also in the top 10 of the past 30 days. Within that time, he already accumulated almost 25,000 Hours Watched with The Forest content.
It was because of the streamers above that The Forest has received some viewership boosts throughout its lifetime. For example, between February and March 2022, the game saw a few considerable pikes in peak viewership thanks to ElMariana’s streams. Similarly, aminematue, k4sen, and Inoxtag boosted the game’s Hours Watched significantly between August and September 2022.
The Forest compared to other survival games
Compared to all games on Twitch, The Forest doesn’t perform extraordinarily. But in its niche, it’s pretty competitive. One major inspiration for The Forest was Don’t Starve, an uncompromising survival game by Klei Entertainment. Don’t Starve contains common survival elements, such as resource gathering, crafting, and shelter building. These are combined with a strange world full of mysterious creatures. Its multiplayer expansion, Don’t Starve Together, is quite popular on Twitch, with over 500,000 Hours Watched almost every month. In contrast, the original didn’t even reach 11,000 HW last month. It seems Don’t Starve Together is a much more enjoyable co-op experience, while The Forest is beloved in co-op and single-player.
Unlike Don’t Starve, the multiplayer survival game Rust shares a similar visual style with The Forest. Additionally, both games had their official launch in 2018. Still, Rust has a thriving community on Twitch. In January 2023, it was the 29th most-watched game on the platform. It has consistently reached above 8 million Hours Watched throughout the last few months. Developer Facepunch Studios has done an excellent job creating a survival game that can break into the mainstream. Compared to The Forest, Rust is more complex with FPS elements, PVE events, and PVP survival. Furthermore, its makers still expand and update the game. To boost its Twitch viewership, Rust brings out events and Twitch drops in collaboration with the platform.
Famous content creators in The Forest’s niche
We’ve already highlighted several streamers that have significantly contributed to The Forest’s Twitch performance. Now, let’s look at those creators who have made their name with The Forest content. These folks are/were highly specialized in The Forest and are widely beloved by the game’s community.
Veteran Twitch streamer and YouTuber GRONKH has never played The Forest live on stream. Still, he’s known for his laid-back and entertaining The Forest content on YouTube, which drove many of his current fans to his channels. Starting in the game’s Early Alpha, GRONKH has uploaded over 300 The Forest videos.
On Twitch, he stands out, too. Although GronkhTV was the second most popular The Forest channel in 2022 in terms of Hours Watched, the German streamer was nowhere to be found in the top 10, according to Peak Viewers. This is because of the channel’s impressive Airtime of 366 hours. In comparison, the second highest total Aitime of The Forest streams belongs to Galadriex, with 101 hours. Even more interesting is that GronkhTV is GRONKH’s second channel. His placement among the top 10 was earned entirely by broadcasts of his The Forest YouTube videos, proving that his followers still enjoy his The Forest content.
GRONKH has already promised to play Sons of the Forest in front of his Twitch audience. As one of the top streamers on the platform, we can expect a notable viewership boost from him.
Facebook streamer Bravo is another The Forest enthusiast. It’s his most-streamed game at 158 hours and one the first he’s ever streamed. While broadcasting The Forest, Bravo had 261 Average Viewers and nearly 1.2 Peak Viewers. His dedication to the game has even earned him a platform partnership. Bravo enjoys other survival games, too, including Dying Light, Green Hell, and Stranded Deep. Unfortunately, Bravo’s last broadcast was in October 2022, so we don’t know if they’ll be back for the sequel of their favorite game.
What we can expect from Sons of the Forest
It’s only a few days until survival fans can finally get their hands on Sons of the Forest. As we established, its predecessor never reached great heights on Twitch. However, with variety streamers creating awareness for the franchise, the launch of Sons of the Forest might be different. Moreover, Endight Games has recently shared some exciting new features of the sequel in an exclusive interview with IGN. Players can experience more immersive graphics, AI companion Calvin, and a three times bigger map size. In addition, there’ll be a rotation through seasons and a more advanced building system.
The Forest certainly hasn’t lost its charm after nearly ten years of being playable. It made some gamers fall in love with the genre and remains a staple among survival fans. When it comes to its sequel, survival enthusiasts can look forward to tons of improvements and additional features. A new and thrilling journey awaits on February 23, and we’re curious to find out if it can delight the masses.
