Sleeping Forest is a small unrevisitable field map in Final Fantasy VII located in the Icicle Area directly between the Bone Village and the Corel Valley. It is visited twice during "Parting with Aeris": once in a short dream sequence, and once when traveling onto the Forgotten Capital. On subsequent returns, the field disappears, and the forest is part of the world map.
The forest has no enemy encounters, even on the world map.
Layout[]
The Sleeping Forest comprises only two screens (with a third shared with Corel Valley). The first is visited during the dream sequence and later properly visited by Cloud. If the player does not dig up the Lunar Harp before entering the Forest, the first screen of the forest repeats infinitely.
The second screens become accessible with the Lunar Harp possessed, and when accessed, for the first time, the screen with flash read and tet will read "The Sleeping Forest awoke...". This screen leads onto the forest exit screen, the first screen of Corel Valley (as it reads "Corel Valley" on the Menu) that serves as a midway point between the valley and Sleeping Forest.
Quests[]
The forest can only be accessed during "Parting with Aeris". The first is during a dream sequence at the start of the chapter, in which Cloud and Aeris talk. Later, the player visits the forest itself, and can only proceed with the Lunar Harp.
Items[]
Kujata Materia runs along the ground in the second screen and must be caught before it leaves the screen. If the player's Materia inventory is full when picking it up, the Kujata Materia will be lost forever. Usually if a player attempts to pick up a Materia when the inventory is full, the game will notify the player and ask them to remove Materia first. Due to programming error this never happens with Kujata; the player merely receives the message that they have acquired the Materia, but upon entering the Materia inventory the Materia is not there, as there was no room to place it in.
Musical themes[]
"In Search of the Man in Black" plays inside of the Sleeping Forest.
Behind the scenes[]
Dummied dialogue for Bone Village has evidence for changes to the Sleeping Forest made during development. Some lines in Bone Village include tutorials for the Ancient Forest, despite Ancient Forest being an optional area much further away from the Sleeping Forest. However, in the game code, the fields are ordered in a way that otherwise mostly matches with the order the game introduces areas, except that the Ancient Forest is placed right after Sleeping Forest and immediately before Corel Valley.
Additionally, the entrance to the Sleeping Forest from Bone Village may have been planned to be closed at one point, as dummied dialogue in Bone Village suggests the way in would have opened for Aeris with "a loud noise".[1]