Open-world games have become very popular over the past few years, with games such as Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto 5 encouraging gamers to explore huge areas of virtual land and seek out all the different secrets held within. In that same tradition, developer Endnight presents its new game, The Forest, a game that seeks to give players the freedom that open-world games provide along with elements of survival horror that will instill the experience with tension and terror.

Here's the basic premise of the game, according to Eurogamer. A lone survivor of a plane crash ends up on an island that is full of cannibalistic mutants, and must find shelter and create weapons to survive in this new world. Each player must then choose how they want to try to survive the game without the game providing instructions, something that creative director Ben Falcone has grown tired of in past games.

"I've been frustrated with games for the past five or six years constantly telling you what to do...It sometimes feels like work playing a game where you have a backlog of missions you have to do, constantly being bothered by NPCs. We wanted to create a world where we could drop the player into and give them free range to do whatever they want, similar to something like Minecraft where a lot of the fun comes from decisions that you make. We wanted to capture that but do it in a world that looked realistic," said Falcone. 

Players will be able to compete with each over for who can survive the longest, with Endnight setting up leaderboards to track the top players. In addition, permadeath can be allowed so that if players die they have to start all over again from the beginning if they want an extra challenge. However, there is an ending for the game hidden within the world of The Forest, and players can either search for it or settle for exploring the game's world and trying to survive. Players can also try to explore the game to find clues to discover what happened to cause the island's residents to go insane. It is up to each player to decide how to tackle the challenges that come with The Forest.

The Forest does not have a release date yet, but the game's beta is set to become available later in 2014. Multiplayer may or may not appear in the game, but Endnight is focused primarily on creating a single player experience for now.