Everybody needs to recover their sanity from time to time. This herbal riff on a Corpse Reviver inspired by The Forest is my prescription.
You’ll need
- 1 oz (30ml) gin (I used Lighthouse)
- .50 oz (15ml) lemon juice
- .50 oz (15ml) yellow Chartreuse
- .50 oz (15ml) Dolin sweet white vermouth
- 2 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
Add all ingredients to a shaker filled with ice. Shake thoroughly until chilled. Fine strain into your chosen vessel. Check the horizon for any sign of Virginia. Check again. Serve!
“The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human.”
– Victor Hugo
I was an early access backer of The Forest but I can’t actually play it. Not because I’m disappointed in the game—quite the opposite. I love it.
I can’t play The Forest for the same reason I can’t play Subnautica. As soon as the first creepy creature jumps out at me from the dark, it’s instant brown trousers time. Screech like a small child, alt-f4, don’t touch it again for months.
Despite my wussiness, I can appreciate The Forest for being a survival game with a difference. It has all the standard wilderness survival stuff I love: chopping trees, building shelters, acquiring food and water, but it also blends in that lovely horror aspect that makes it stand out among the crowd. Fighting off mutants adds a new survival dilemma: running out of medicine in The Forest is just as bad as running out of food and water in other survival games.
Looking for more survival spooks? Try the Thalassophobia from Subnautica.
That’s why I decided to go with a riff on a Corpse Reviver for The Forest. This classic cocktail was originally marketed as a hangover cure; a kind of medicine in itself, if you will. Considering the importance that craftable healing items play in survival (Herbal Medicine, for example), it only feels right to use a ‘medicinal’ cocktail as a baseline for the inspiration. Plus, you know, there’s the whole plot hook of the game involved in a name like “corpse reviver”.
Swap out a few of the ingredients for a slightly more herbal profile, and you end up with a recognisable but distinctly surprising riff on an existing recipe: much like The Forest itself.
You might find a molotov cocktail a little more practical on a mutant-infested island, but this cocktail will still help you restore your sanity after a long visit to the undercaverns.
Hope you enjoy. Cheers!
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