Green Hell The jungle keeps score

You check a wristwatch for hydration, energy, proteins, carbs, and fats, then decide what to eat next. Meat for protein, fruit for carbs, nuts for fats, and clean water or boiled water to avoid parasites. Dirty water, raw meat, and unknown mushrooms can poison you or start hallucinations, and sleeping on bare ground carries its own risks. It is strict, and the first hours are the hardest while you learn which foods fix which deficit.

You open inspection mode and look over your arms and legs after a fight or a walk through deep water. A cut wants a clean bandage, an infected wound wants disinfection, maggots, or a thorn needle first, and leeches need pulling off. You wash mud and blood away because staying dirty invites trouble, and low sanity makes survival harder. Tribal fighters, snakes, spiders, caimans, and jaguars give you plenty of reasons to check yourself often.

You chop wood and bamboo, collect stone, mud, and rope, and frame up a shelter for the night. Later that shelter can grow into a fenced compound or a multi-level home in the treetops, with furniture, decorations, lighting, and fortifications. There is farming too, plus honey, feathers, eggs, and insects gathered for household needs. You can breed and feed capybaras, tapirs, peccaries, armadillos, and anteaters, and pet the ones that trust you.

You play anthropologist Jake Higgins, stranded while searching for his missing wife Mia, across a campaign of over 25 hours about guilt and survival. The free Spirits of Amazonia prequel adds over 20 hours set before those events. If you want the systems without the plot, Endless Mode is pure jungle survival. Solo or online co-op, with 20-plus updates of mechanics behind it, and a Flamekeeper Challenge for a harder stand against the tribes.