Small Town Americana
Night in the Woods is a very specific game for a very specific audience. At first glance, it’s a cutesy adventure game featuring anthropomorphic characters with minor platforming elements. On closer inspection, Night in the Woods is a game that addresses depression, anxiety and the struggles of living in a small town. This indie game manages to punch above its weight and delivers a story with some serious emotional impact. Night in the Woods is far from perfect. The platforming sections are too basic to be challenging and too long to be engaging. There are some odd technical quirks that I found annoying. And lastly the story as a whole can feel disappointing at times as it tries to weave in several disparate plot threads in the finale.
You play as Mae. Mae is a snarky sarcastic 20 year old who recently dropped out of college for unknown reasons and returns to her small town of Possum Springs. It becomes quite clear that Mae doesn’t want to talk about her past and instead just wants to crash at her parent’s place, see her old friends and act like an irresponsible teenager. The problem is that everything in Possum Springs has changed while she was away. Her friends have grown up, have full-time jobs and plans for the future. Her parents are struggling with debt, stressed out of their minds and yet have to put a brave face in front of Mae. The town itself is transforming, Mae’s favorite restaurant is closed, people are leaving in droves and townsfolk are struggling to find jobs. Most of the game centers around Mae learning about what happened to Possum Springs as well as trying to find herself again. I mention “most of the game” because there is a separate plot thread involving the mystery of a severed arm that I think does a disservice to the story. To talk more about this plot and how it is handled would ruin the story. But to keep it brief, I found its execution done poorly and diluted the impact of the best parts of the game.
This will sound very weird but Night in the Woods plays a lot like the recent Persona games if they were only the social sim parts. Each day, you wander around town, talk to folks and play mini-games like a dungeon crawler named Demontower, stealing pretzels from a food stand or looking through a telescope. The day ends with Mae choosing which friend to hang out with. After that Mae stumbles upon a dream sequence where there is some light platforming where Mae needs to find four musicians to wake up. The final act is determined by which friend Mae hung out most. There is also a handy notepad which keeps track of every character Mae meets as well as drawings that is a rough representation of their identity.
Night in the Woods despite being a very small game has an excessive amount of loading screens. The game is not graphically intensive, yet there are loading screens between every level. The most egregious example I can remember is a window that Mae can sneak into by jumping on the rooftops. Once Mae reaches the window, there is a loading screen where you control Mae’s paws to open the window. And then there is another loading screen to enter the window. While it doesn’t sound bad on paper, imagine doing the same thing over 4-5 days. It’s kind of astonishing that the entire town of Possum Springs is only 5 levels large yet there is a need to have a loading screen between each of them. Even for an indie title, there is no excuse for this kind of technical deficiency. The game could have benefited from a quick travel system to bypass these cumbersome loads. I also had issues running the game in full screen because the game would suddenly lag and hitch. After consulting the Internet, uninstalling and installing multiple drivers, trying to play with/without a controller I could not figure out whether it was my PC doing this or the game itself. I eventually resorted to playing the game in windowed mode.
While it sounds like I’m dour of Night in the Woods, that is far from the truth. Night in the Woods manages to hit exceptionally hard especially if you are familiar with living in small-town Americana. The game talks about malls becoming deserted, young people leaving for cities and jobs becoming obsolete. The game also talks about the people who choose to stay in town, their mental state as well as their struggle for survival. I haven’t even gotten to talk about Mae and her story of being the first one in the family to go to college and dropping out due to psychological stresses. The parallels between Night in the Woods and real life are deliberate and their impact will hinge on your familiarity with these issues. Night in the Woods is not for everyone. This is not a game where you earn points or shoot people. This is also not a very happy game, despite its looks. It is a commentary about real life situations, which doesn’t sound very fun to play but is very important to experience.
