I Hear the Forest is a cursed woodland ranger sim with talking trees, flying witch heads, and a suspicious rabbit man

Ukrainian studio Podoba Interactive has announced I Hear the Forest, a folk horror game where you play a forest ranger who's been cursed and now has to survive a woodland full of talking trees, flying witches' heads, and unsettling dryads. It's heading to Steam with a planned 2027 release.

The setup mixes mundane ranger tasks — picking mushrooms, fishing, cooking in a cauldron — with the constant threat of whatever the curse has unleashed around you. You've got a gun and magical amulets to keep yourself alive while searching for a way to break the curse. There's also a rabbit man in a flat cap who hangs around your cottage asking for a lighter, which is either charming or deeply ominous. Podoba promise multiple endings, implying several ways to lift the curse, and describe the atmosphere as thick with lingering fear. The studio's previous work includes rural horror game Dread Fields, so they've got experience making the countryside feel threatening.

Podoba Interactive is a Ukrainian indie studio, and I Hear the Forest fits squarely into the folk horror genre — think Slavic mythology, cursed forests, and creatures drawn from Eastern European folklore rather than Western slasher tropes. It's a niche that's been gaining traction in indie horror circles, and Podoba's track record with rural dread gives them credibility here.

One caveat worth flagging: Podoba have used AI to localise their Steam page descriptions into some languages, though they say human translations will replace those eventually. Their earlier game Back to Hearth also used AI-generated textures that were manually processed to fit the visual style. Neither is a dealbreaker, but it's worth knowing going in. I Hear the Forest is on Steam now for wishlisting ahead of its 2027 launch.