Night in the Woods

(written jul 13, 2017)

Start New Game. On the screen appears a visual-novel segment. Lines of text, possibly a poem, scroll into vision. “In the year Granddad died…” the player chooses from a few possible next lines. I chose “the highway extension came.” It inspired a memory from the writer, but the story continued without giving much attention to it. I was able to make a couple more choices, recalled what “Granddad” was staring at in his hospital bed, and then…

“he turned to my dad
eyes still wide
‘this house is haunted’
he said
and died.”

Fade out. The game begins.

A lack of player control is usually a poor first impression, but something gave me confidence about Night in the Woods. The poem felt nostalgic, but melancholy, as if the writer was accepting their nostalgia. It’s the kind of feeling that Mae Borowski, a college dropout returning to her hometown, wants to go back to.

Night in the Woods centers around Mae and her return to her childhood home, Possum Springs. It’s a quiet little place with not a lot to do, but that’s where its strength lies. Infinite Fall nails this atmosphere down to a science. Just outside her house, Mae can jump from trash cans to trees to telephone pole wires, balancing high above apartments and small businesses.

A lot of optional content lives in Possum Springs. Multiple NPCs share little parts of them, like poetry and star-gazing, with Mae, in bite-sized mini-games that sprout organically from the game’s feedback loop. Night in the Woods shares the day-by-day socializing found in RPGs like Persona; whenever Mae hangs out with her friends, you might start a minigame where you have to throw perogies in your friends mouth or jam out in some rhythm minigames (which are fairly complex and only appear once per song. They’d be nice to replay.)

There’s a childlike sense of exploration in Night in the Woods, and as rich the world can feel, it ends up being mere story padding. Mae’s friends are, like her, cartoon animal caricatures, but with bona fide personalities and hard-hitting dialogue. How the player interacts with these characters and how the story plays out is more akin to a visual novel, and it can get muddled in an adventure platformer.

With how little world traversal and interaction come into play, the world is there for the characters more than vice versa, and finding what to do to start the next story beat can get pretty confusing. Possum Springs’ idiosyncratic style and the linearity of the game’s storytelling just don’t mix.

That being said, the tone of Night in the Woods is masterfully controlled. Sometimes it feels like an episode of Tales of the Crypt, but it can go right back to “mini therapy session” any time it wants. The game constantly changes focus from Mae’s personal troubles with adapting outside of Possum Springs to the threatening underbelly of her beloved home; it starts swirling them together, teasing the player with peeks into Mae’s cryptic nightmares and growing anxiety, and it all ends with…something very weird.

I was disappointed in where the story ended up leading. I was left underwhelmed by a twist I considered too silly for it’s own good, so I took the time to look up what other people felt about it. Among some agreeing with me, I saw passionate responses to it. “What a perfect ending!” “This game gets me so much.” It was a reaction more intense and personal than many other games I’ve seen this year, and I’m counting the drearily thoughtful NieR: Automata.

Night in the Woods is deeply rooted in a place I didn’t grow up in, politics I couldn’t relate to. But games that exist to share moments and memories with other players, that channel such raw emotion from a specific audience, are a rarity to respect. I can’t recommend Night in the Woods from a personal place, but if something in this game speaks to you, reply to it. You’ll start up a nice conversation.