Night in the Woods: The Journey Home

Of all the games that were released in the first quarter of the year, the one I was the most excited about was Night in the Woods. For some reason the game called to me even though I knew next to nothing about it. I found out I enjoyed the art direction and game concept from a few screen shots, one preview video, and an abstract from the studio’s website. It looked like it contained everything I love about a game: story, deep themes, and action, but I had no idea how personal the story would be to me.

NITW is a side scrolling adventure game that takes place in a crumbling blue collar town called Possum Springs. The town is based off the real world rustbelt cities in the U.S. that have seen jobs move overseas, crime rise, and infrastructure decay. Interestingly, the citizens of Possum Springs are not human, but instead animals. You play the game as Mae Borowski, a cat punk rocker, bass playing, college dropout who moved back home. Your friends, Gregg, Bea, and Angus catch you up to speed on what has been going on in town while you have been at college. From there the story evolves as you get to know more and more about each of your friends and other townsfolk.

Gameplay is very basic and depends upon a limited amount of buttons. The game is completely driven on written dialogue, no voice at all (except when Mae wakes up every morning stretches and grunts). Personally, I like this choice. It gives the player the option to fill in what each characters voice sounds like. Also the conversations are written extremely well, making it easy to guess emotions and intention during a chat between characters.

At this point all of what I have said about NITW sounds pretty conventional. Nothing sticks out as pointing to something brilliant, new, or exciting in a game. Broken town, crime, friends, college, and jobs all sounds like life, and this is exactly why NITW is so great.

Night in the Woods tackles the realities of life that many of us go through. Mae’s experience is so similar to mine I would have guessed the creators based her on myself.

Mae dropped out of school, I dropped out of school. Mae plays bass, I play bass. Mae plays games, I play games. Beyond our shared interests, we also share the difficulty of growing up into an adult.

Mae leaves college after an incident that you don’t find out about until later in the game. Her parents gave their savings for her to go to college but she doesn’t find out until. You can tell she tries to reconcile the decision she made and how it impacts her family. She sees her friends making adult decisions even though she returned home expecting it to be the same. The world has changed and she struggles to find purpose in a place that is no longer the way she remembers it.

This feeling of being lost in a world that changes too quickly is something I share with Mae, and I am sure others do as well. I firmly believe we grow up trying to find “home.” We want that comfort and security that our childhood home provided us. Granted, not everyone grew up in a secure home and this is something the game addresses as well. The quest for home is a struggle many of us go through as we progress into adulthood. Mae is no closer to understanding her path then I am, and this is comforting.

Night in the Woods is very much a modern coming of age story. It addresses issues that many of us go through as we stumble towards finding meaning in life. I enjoyed every minute I played and I am definitely going to play it again. Most importantly, Mae’s story reassured me that I am not the only one who struggles to find meaning as an adult. The writers are acutely aware of the shared experience that many young adults go through. Sometimes we have to stop, take a breath, and assess our direction in life. Like Mae, sometimes we just need to find home, even when it no longer exists.