Nature's relaxing, yeah? Life as a forest ranger, wandering around amid the trees and making sure none of the animals are getting up to mischief sounds a bit like bliss. Unless you're the forest ranger in freshly announced horror game I Hear the Forest, who's been cursed and is thus not having a relaxing time in the woods.

The latest work of Ukrainian studio Podoba Interactive, who've got form when it comes to rural spooks, I Hear the Forest lets you wander around picking mushrooms, fishing, and cooking up meals in your cauldron. Ahh. Chill. If you can ignore the talking trees, begging dryads and mask-like floating faces that pesky curse has filled the forest with.

As such, your job's to stay safe with help from your trusty gun and magical amulets, while looking for ways to un-curse yourself. Also, there's a weird rabbit bloke in a flat cap who seems to hang out around your cottage and wants to know if you've got a lighter. I'm sure he means well.

WE'RE MAKING A NEW FOLK HORROR GAME

— Podoba Interactive🇺🇦 (@podoba_interact) August 17, 2026

You play as a forest ranger who finds himself surrounded by talking trees, flying witches' heads, and cursed dryads.

You'll be very lucky if you make it out of the forest alive

I Hear the Forest

(link below) pic.twitter.com/DCpVKUqZm0

Podoba promise multiple endings, which would suggest there being many ways to try and lift the curse, but you'll have to plough through "a thick, lingering atmosphere of fear" adorned with spooky scary skeletons to get there. Sounds intriguing to me, but then I am a sucker for a talking tree. Look, they've been around a while and they just stand there watching, surely they've got some eyebrow-raising tales to tell. Or maybe they'd just moan about their branches aching every time birds come to nest.

One thing worth noting: Podoba have used AI to localise their page descriptions into some languages. They promise this "generative translation will eventually be replaced by human translation". Meanwhile, one of their previous games - Back to Hearth - featured some AI-generated textures which were "manually processed to match the game's visual style".

If you still fancy wishlisting I Hear the Forest ahead of its planned release in 2027, you can do so on Steam.