Forbidden Forest was the first game designed by Paul Norman, who was kind of a big deal in 8-bit computer gaming - also creating the C64 version of Aztec Challenge, Beyond Forbidden Forest, and Super Huey - before fading out in the 90s, like many of his distinguished peers.
Forbidden Forest at the core is essentially a Space Invaders descendant but with a heavy dark fantasy mood. Many C64 players remember it for being a tooth-gnashing horror experience (some even call it an ancestor of the survival horror genre) as much as a shooting game. Norman was asked by his bosses to make a simple bow-and-arrow game, but as a movie fan he decided to entertain himself by designing something more stimulating. Although the graphics are blocky in that early C64 way, they create an effective impression of a distinctly British setting full of overgrown shrubbery, gnarled trees and rotting stumps, and cryptic altars. It feels like a place that might have once been full of druids. As Norman told Retro Gamer magazine, "[T]he brain does the work for the audience. Put enough simple things together, working towards the same effect, and it can look like you know what you're doing!" There's a simple parallax scrolling trick to give a sense of depth, and as the moon passes through the sky, the lighting shifts from the gray of early evening to a black, starry night. Very impressive stuff for the time.
The player controls an archer who's stuck in the Forbidden Forest for the night and has to battle through waves of nightmarish creatures before facing the dark lord of the forest, the Demogorgon. The archer is planted at the bottom center of the screen and pushing the joystick to the left or right will adjust the angle of his aim (up or down also adjusts the vertical angle), or if held long enough will cause the archer to start running horizontally through the forest, which is important because he's faster than the enemies and they'll disappear if they're run off the screen. One push of the button will notch an arrow and another press releases the arrow. The archer can't move until the arrow hits its target or vanishes from sight. Conserving ammunition is also a concern because the archer only has five quivers with 10 arrows each. The guy isn't anything like modern depictions of archers, like the cinematic version of Legolas, who can accurately shoot arrows at all ranges like a machine gun while flipping all over the place. His actions are slow and deliberate and he's highly vulnerable to anything that gets too close to be shot.
The game is brutally difficult! Setting it to the easiest setting will replenish the quivers and require fewer monsters to be slain per wave, but the monsters themselves remain consistent through all four difficulty levels. They're very fast and will annihilate the archer if a shot misses or if the player makes the split-second mistake of attempting a shot instead of running like hell. Advancing through the game will require real skill and practice no matter what.
Norman drew from classic movies and folklore for the creatures. The player will face giant spiders, dragons, giant frogs, giant (everything is big) venom-spitting serpents, and cloaked phantoms. Giant bees were swiped from Ray Harryhausen's adaptation of Mysterious Island, and the undead skeletons were (yet again) taken from Jason and the Argonauts. The demogorgon himself, who can only be seen when lightning flashes and must be slain within a brief time limit, is heavily inspired by the demon in Night/Curse of the Demon.
Death means the player gets to watch the archer be brutalized by whatever killed him in a gory, befitting manner. The spiders devour the archer from head to toe, with blood spurting out of the carcass the whole way. The frogs leap down and crush the archer as surely as if he'd been splattered by a boulder. The skeletons stab the archer in a frenzy, blood once again spraying everywhere. The snake's venom melts the archer. Successfully making it through a wave results in the archer dancing a happy jig. Defeating the phantom is especially memorable as the thing loudly shrieks as it slowly fades from sight.
Forbidden Forest is a case of a young programmer going well beyond the bare minimum expected from him and creating something memorable. It's atmospheric, intense, and very challenging. It isn't a cutsie-poo fantasy like so many other games (not that there's anything wrong with that), but it's got an Old World grit to it with its vulnerable protagonist simply trying to survive a night in a single creepy setting.
Suggested reading: The Black Stone by Robert E. Howard
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