It didn't take long for speedrunners to get hold of Sons of the Forest, the follow-up to the 2018 survival horror game The Forest, and a bunch of people have already managed to finish the sequel in record time. Endnight's new release has proven itself popular since releasing not long ago, registering Sons of the Forest pulling in big numbers on Twitch. The fact that this is a game from a small studio is equally impressive, especially going up against the AAA giants of the industry.
It may be a horror title, but it also has its endearing qualities, which could explain some of the popularity. For example, players seem to adore Sons of the Forest's Kelvin NPC, posting tributes to him on places like Reddit. Of course, when a video game becomes popular, it quickly grabs the attention of the speedrunning community, and sure enough, there are players already setting world records.
When looking at the Sons of the Forest page on speedrun.com, there are several entries. Most of these were done in "Peaceful" mode, which removes enemy threats, showing just how many people are keen to beat Endnight's horror game as quickly as possible. At the time of writing, the top spot is held by user fruich with a mind-melting time of just 7:27:683. While no one has managed to get the time below eight minutes on the more difficult settings, a user by the name of Benjamin_Sama__ has achieved a time of 8:44:967 on "Normal" difficulty, which is still amazingly fast. It should go without saying that the videos contain massive spoilers.
Obviously, to get to the end of the game in such a short time does require utilizing glitches. However, even finding such glitches and using them advantageously is tricky enough, but that's how people break world records. It's also not the first time a brand-new game has caught the eye of speedrunners. Recently, someone managed to use glitches to beat Atomic Heart in seven minutes, which is pretty impressive. It remains to be seen whether Endnight will fix the exploits in Sons of the Forest. However, given that the game is in early access, it's likely the studio will be sending out bug fixes aplenty.
It wasn't long ago that Sons of the Forest was the most wishlisted game on Steam, beating out Bethesda's upcoming sci-fi epic Starfield. Quite how long this popularity will continue cannot be said at this stage, but even when SotF does slip down the charts, it will still draw in the speedrunning crowd who will be determined to achieve even faster times.
Sons of the Forest is out now in early access for PC.
Source: Speedrun