Mae plays the bass in a band with her friends every few days, little blips of nostalgia that take shape as a rhythm game not dissimilar to Guitar Hero in its controls. Woven so effortlessly through these moments are an impressive number of rather charming and clever minigames that shake up this basic formula. Hanging out with any of Mae's closest friends, including Gregg and Bea at the outset, and later, Angus, instead moves the game forward to the evening for more poignant narratives that pit Mae directly against her frustrations and the ugly emotional wounds that stand between her and so many of those she used to know intimately as friends. Other characters, such as Germ and Lori, offer daytime distractions in the form of short vignettes that add richness to town's character and offer moments of introspection for Mae herself, without drawing the day to a close. Exploring the town allows her to build relationships with some side characters, such as Selma "Selmers" Forrester and the local pastor, Kate Young, through simple conversation exchanges that build on themselves daily.
Night in the woods characters as humans free#
Mae wakes each day free to do with her time what she, and the player, chooses. Comparable in style to other narrative-driven games of its ilk, such as Oxenfree, sharp, witty dialogue and story take the forefront.
One part adventure game, one part side-scrolling platformer, Night in the Woods is a game about people, confronting very directly the often-avoided and painfully-existential way that relationships grow apart despite our best efforts to maintain them. But underneath these reunions is a familiar, crippling sense that everything has changed, that everything around her is fundamentally and permanently different, and it is instead Mae herself who has stayed the same while the world passed her by. Her friends are still around, her neighbors, her family. Mae returns to Possum Springs expecting it to be the same as it was before she moved away-and it is, in some superficial way. What appears at first glance to be somewhat of a Juno-esque, almost John Hughes-like treatise on youth turns out instead to be a marvelously rich and poignant take on the emotional diaspora of being a young adult.
Recently released after an extraordinarily successful Kickstarter run ($209k) and just over three years in development, Night in the Woods comes from Infinite Fall, the powerful teaming of Scott Benson, Bethany Hockenberry, and Alec Holowka. While at first Mae enjoys a brief moment of happiness and comfort joining her old friends for band practice and pizza, the discovery of a mysterious severed arm in kicks off a strangely supernatural spiral that drags Mae and her friends to the very depths of Possum Springs, forced to face head-on the most difficult challenges in getting older. From the very first moments, it's clear how troubling it is for Mae to return home she reunites with her parents and many of her old friends on her first day back, whose mixed reactions set the sharp, emotional tone for the beautifully animated and smartly written adventure game Night in the Woods.