I started night in the woods with high expectations. I first stumbled onto the game after reading a glowing review from gameinformer. Later a friend personally recommended me to the game. She basically forced me to try it out. I love going off of word of mouth, so this is what pushed me towards trying it despite the obvious "weirdness."
I eyeballed the game for a few weeks but quickly forgot about it in the slew of indie releases that frequent steam. Hearing about the game through other online forums, I found that others favorably compared the game's story to something akin to Undertale. At that point that peaked my interest further. I played it, here’s what I have to say.
Over the past few weekends I’ve mediated on the game’s deep story and fantastic writing.
Night in the woods, or NITW for short starts out strong with a wacky opening sequence that has the protagonist Mae, a 20 something college dropout anamorphic cat returning home for good.
The quirky characters and witty dialogue immediately drew me in to the game’s slowly unraveled mystery. After coming home, Mae tries to settle down into a normal life to relax her mind. Strange events start to occur in the town, building up to a fun murder mystery Mae and her friends must solve.
The day to day game in broken into sections. Often you start out the day walking around town and talking to the various animal citizens before you finally meet up with friends to hang out and spend the evening going on an adventure. Mae’s core group: Bae, Gregg, and Angus, all have a past, and its up to you to discover more and more about each character depending on who you choose to spend time with and engage in conversation.
There are a lot of deep underlying themes here. The economic struggles of small town life, the awkwardness of being a young adult trying to fit in, and discovering what your place is in the universe. All of which I closely relate to since I myself am a 20’s something young adult about to drop out of college. The game confronts head on controversial themes like Gregg and Angus’s homosexual relationship, ethics issues, and dives deep into why her friends seem to be stuck in Possum Springs.
Instead of trying to start a flame war, the game incorporates these elements in such a matter of fact way that I barely noticed them as something I could get angry about. The world is written in such a way that you just accept it for what it is, deeply flawed, full of emotions, and sometimes beautiful. I laughed, almost cried, and got angry at how dumb my friends were being, how unfair life seemed treat me, and how irritating yet loving Mae’s parents could be.
In fact, that is the game's greatest strength, is making the player feel a strong attachment to Mae’s anxiety issues and her personal struggles. The writing is quite good, and there are jokes galore littered into the dialogue, similar to games like Oxen-free and Undertale. Just when I thought NITW veered on the edge of being too “jokey,” it hit me in the gut with another impactful story moment.
One such moment in the game was getting into a fight with your in- game mom. This is an issue I have struggled with for years. I’ve tried very hard to love and respect my mom, but sometimes I disagree with her thoughts and methods. The fight happened in a way that made it feel like I was the one that hurt my own mom’s feelings, and I instantly felt remorse for the dialogue options I chose.
The animation and graphics are stellar. The developers did a great job making sure the game wasn’t buggy, and it feels a lot more polished than most Kickstarter projects. The soundtrack quickly became stuck in my head. Days later I was getting on youtube and listening to it while I drank coffee and wrote papers — a sure sign of a hit soundtrack.
Despite all the numerous standout victory's for telling a compelling story, NITW isn’t without its slow moments. Halfway through the story, I felt like the major murder plot wasn’t moving forward in a meaningful way. The game likes to take tons of unnecessary diversions, and the ending left me longing for something more concrete. There wasn’t really enough structure, as the game was loosely strung together by 4 parts and a short epilogue.
Another complaint I had that I haven’t seen in other reviews is the pseudo platforming segments that Mae is forced to go through every night. I frequently got stuck on these segments and didn’t know where to go to activate the ending of the dream sequences, so I felt as though every platforming segment in the game was a chore.
All throughout the game, I found myself jumping around like crazy because Mae’s walking speed was too slow. My hands also got tired from clicking the jump button, and there wasn’t enough of the town to make it worthwhile to use platforming to explore. In the end, I felt like it was mainly filler so that the whole game wasn’t just story content.
In the end, I fell in love with NITW’s outstanding writing and highly relatable story. I recommend the game to anyone who likes indie’s, it simply cannot be missed. It doesn’t push the medium forward in the way of mechanics, but it’s a landmark achievement for evoking strong emotions from whoever is willing to give this quirky game a try.
9/10