The Forest Cathedral

This brief, raw and unsettling reimagining of a celebrated environmentalist's campaign against pesticides presents a sickly vision of nature contaminated by humans

It ironically has a few bugs, but The Forest Cathedral’s dramatized portrayal of Rachel Carson’s research into pesticides is still one worth your time. Short and succinct, the game blends narrative focused exploration with 2D platforming into a seamless experience. While none of its component elements are particularly earth shattering, the way they are combined makes this game more than the sum of its parts.

The Forest Cathedral is an interesting experience but does not fully work as a video game. The narrative it is telling is based on a real-world person but introduces many elements that are anachronistic to the period and to her life. Maybe the main character should have been named something else and her story should have only hinted at the real-world scandal surrounding DDT and other pesticides.

Despite its original experimental premise, The Forest Cathedral suffers from an unpolished execution.