All Souls: The Haunted Forest

What is All Souls: The Haunted Forest?

All Souls: The Haunted Forest is a short first-person survival horror game set on All Hallows' Eve, 1899. You arrive on an old forest path with a single lantern and an unusual companion: Herbert, a sleepy pet alligator in a witch's hat who will not be hurried. Someone has lined the trail with jack-o'-lanterns, and the night has an objective. Light the four soul lights along the route, then find the stone circle and get Herbert through to the other side.

Something white waits in the fog. It avoids a bright lamp but is drawn to whatever is left alone in the dark, which turns Herbert's slow pace into the central problem of the night. The whole game is built around one walk through one forest in one evening, with a low-poly look borrowed from the PlayStation era and a running time its own makers call short. Everything happens inside a browser tab, so there is no install between deciding to play and standing on the path.

How to play

Progress runs on lantern oil and light. Jack-o'-lanterns mark the old path, and each soul light is lit by holding the use key until it catches. Four of them stand between you and the stone circle, which is where the night ends.

The lamp is your only defence. Held bright, it pushes the white figure back; dimmed, it burns less oil but leaves less distance between the two of you. That trade is the core decision of the game, and it comes back every time the oil runs lower. The figure takes whatever is left alone in the dark first, so Herbert matters. He is slow, he needs waking, and he can be told to wait or to follow. Leaving him behind while you scout ahead is a gamble. He will bite the ghost if she gets too close, but he will not hurry for anyone. Read the path, spend oil deliberately, and keep the alligator inside the lamp's reach.

Controls

Movement uses WASD, with the mouse for looking; the arrow keys also work if that suits you better. Shift runs, C crouches, and F switches the lantern between bright and dimmed. Crouching sits on a single key, so it is easy to drop low without taking a hand off the lamp.

E is the general interaction key: tap it to use something, hold it to light a soul light. Near Herbert, E does something different, letting you tell him to wait or follow, or nudge him awake when he has settled down in the wrong place. Esc or P opens the pause menu, which also carries the settings and the language choice.

The game requires a keyboard and mouse. Touch screens and gamepads are not supported, so a desktop or laptop is the intended setup. Headphones are recommended.

Tips for your first run

Oil is the resource that decides how the night goes, and Herbert is the resource you cannot afford to lose. A few habits make the first walk less punishing.

• Dim the lamp while the fog is empty, then switch back to bright the moment something white moves; brightness buys distance, dimness buys time.
• Keep Herbert inside the lamp's reach, because whatever is left alone in the dark is taken first and he will not catch up on his own.
• Give commands before you move rather than after: tell him to wait while you scout a soul light, call him to follow when you set off again, and nudge him awake if he settles in the wrong spot.
• Hold E at each soul light until it catches instead of tapping, since lighting one needs a sustained press.
• Use the jack-o'-lanterns as markers along the old path, and remember that four soul lights stand between the trail and the stone circle.
• Wear headphones, and expect one very loud scream.

Content and replayability

The content note deserves a read before pressing play. The game contains a jump scare with a loud scream, flickering light and a dark horror atmosphere, and headphones are recommended, which makes that scare considerably more physical. The tone is spooky rather than action-driven: fog, a slow walk, a lamp running down, and a witch's hat on an alligator for the rare moments of comedy.

The scope is deliberately small, one evening in one forest, with the four soul lights and the stone circle forming the spine of the run. Four language options, English, German, Spanish and Japanese, give a reason to walk the path a second time, and the Japanese version opens with a vertical intro sequence that is worth seeing on its own. Beyond that, this is a game about a single night rather than a long campaign, so treat it as a Halloween evening rather than a week of one.

Presentation and performance

The look is deliberately dated: wobbling polygons, chunky pixels, fog and film grain, all pointed at the PS1 and PS2 era rather than at modern realism. That style does real work here. Fog limits how far ahead you can see, which makes the white figure's arrivals harder to place, and the low-poly geometry keeps the forest strange instead of comfortable.

It runs in a browser with no download, and the graphics and sounds are generated by the game's own code while it runs, rather than pulled from an image or music generator. The build uses three.js under the MIT licence. The game was created by Eric with AI assistance: the code, story texts and translations were written by Claude (Anthropic) under his direction. Headphones are recommended for the audio.

Who should play it

Anyone who wants a Halloween horror game that fits into a single sitting should find plenty to like here. Fans of the PS1 and PS2 aesthetic, the sort who enjoy chunky pixels and fog as design choices rather than limitations, are the obvious audience. Players who like managing a resource that doubles as a weapon will enjoy the lantern toggling, and anyone who has ever wanted a pet alligator in a witch's hat finally gets one.

There are fair reasons to skip it as well. The jump scare is loud, the light flickers, and the atmosphere stays dark throughout. A keyboard and mouse are required, with no touch or gamepad support, so phone players are out. And the pace is slow by design, because Herbert is not going to run for you.