Night in the Woods Review (Gonzo)
I deeply enjoyed this game for being very story-rich and having a lot of exploration and dialogue choices. There's also a lot of metaphors and themes that correlate to our real world around us which really make the gameplay close to home, quite literally.
You play as Mae, the main character who abruptly now has no future as a college dropout and returns to her hometown of Possum Springs, coming to find that even the past has oddly changed as well. Her home resembles that of a typical Rust Belt small town—economically-stagnating, people scraping by for any kind of work to make a living, a lot of reliable, good paying jobs from long before having left, and many shops and places of gathering having closed particularly when Mae was gone attending college. The setting captures a town ‘lost in time’ during autumn, forgotten for what glory it once had, and really induces a sort of nostalgic and contemplative mindset onto the player, which I find is best played when alone.
Progressively through the game you’ll discover that the story becomes more revealing and complex, slowly finding out the grim reasons behind why Mae left college along with learning more about her friends and family who were really well-written and have unique, memorable personalities. Depending on your choices, you can come to spend time with some more than others and see how their fates are much like Mae’s: uncertain, lost, not guaranteed, and their own pasts being dragged behind them in their own unique ways. There’s a great degree of emotional and conversational range with these characters when these existential, everyday subjects are brought up or encountered, which I really loved for feeling quite real. Regarding these things, the game does bring forth the challenges and importance of mental health and reaches into the player in a pretty powerful way: causing them to sympathetically reflect upon the conditions of the characters’ lives while also allowing the player to reflect thoughtfully of their own. Other challenges include financial problems, stress, arguing, relationship problems, crime, drinking, fanaticism, and the consequences of risk-taking, which again capture the real world setting with situations you’d find with actual people.
I also commend the soundtrack for being incredibly well-made and enjoyable for an indie game which was crowdfunded and laboriously crafted.
If you like a nice slice of life story that can be both cozy and intense, then please give this game a try. You’ll really like it and appreciate the ambiance, music, diverse characters, and authentic plot.