Games of the Generation: Night in the Woods

With next-gen quickly becoming current, we are looking back on our favourite games of the last seven years. Next up: grumpy cats.

Infinite Fall’s Night in the Woods is my favorite video game story ever. High praise? Yes. A big swing? Maybe. But it doesn’t change the absolute truth that the story of Mae Borowski, a cartoon cat in search of a reason to live, is one of the most nuanced, hilarious, troubling, uplifting, and honest narratives I’ve ever played through.

You play as Mae, who’s returning to her hometown of Possum Springs after a vague, violent episode led to her dropping out of college. Moving back into her childhood room and reconnecting with her old friends who never left the former mining town, Mae tries to find her place in the world while slowly uncovering a mysterious plot involving powers beyond human understanding.

This story comes through a simple gameplay loop: every morning, you wake up, go downstairs, and walk through town. Some days you get to play bass in your old band and jam to some incredible original songs (seriously, Weird Autumn and Die Anywhere Else are absolute bangers). Some days you hang out with friends and do fun mini-games like smashing light bulbs, shoplifting, or getting into gut-twisting arguments with your mother about whether or not you’re a failure or if she and your father are the ones who never had any ambition. What a fun game, she’s a talking cat!

In between all of these activities, Mae’s daily routine quickly becomes a comforting routine for you as well. As you wake up every day, run downstairs to say hi to your Mom, and head out the door to see your friends and neighbors, the town of Possum Springs feels alive and vibrant, full of familiar faces. The cast is stellar, full of lovable characters like goth socialist alligator Bea, ball of nervous energy Gregg, and his boyfriend the quiet and introspective bear Angus.

While the game’s atmosphere and aesthetic are charming, the story is unafraid to go to some very dark places. Like I just mentioned, there’s a whopper of a confrontation with Mae’s mother in the game, and Possum Springs’ economic woes, standing in for the decline of America’s rust belt, is a prominent theme. The game has a lot to say about class, mental illness, the inhumanity of capitalism, and conservative power’s willingness to consume the future to glorify the past — sometimes literally. It makes each of these points with devastatingly smart writing — writing that also excels in brighter moments, so the game never buckles under too much heaviness.

Night in the Woods’s writing is full of bright moments. In one early mini-game, you have the chance to steal an animatronic grocery store mascot. Later, an entire side-quest line revolves around caring for baby rats. Mae as a character is always just sarcastic enough to be compelling without ever slipping into a grating ‘too cool for school’ level of side-eye, and these disaffected millennial characters actually behave and sound like real disaffected millennials, not a writer’s room’s idea of them. There’s an authenticity to everyone’s naiveté and gallows humor that will make anyone in the right age group feel seen and heard.

There may not be a ton of mechanical complexity in Night in the Woods — it’s basically a walking simulator/visual novel with a lot of extra steps — but every scene you enter, every conversation Mae has, and every misadventure you stumble through, feels like time well spent. You and Mae both have to learn to slow down and rebuild one day at a time, all the while finding all sorts of joys in the (admittedly crumbling) world around you. Coming from a small town with a lot of similarities to Possum Springs, I felt like I was coming home again.

Late in the game, Angus the bear says: “I believe in a universe that doesn’t care, and people who do.” This line has been etched in my brain since I first read it. That’s the thesis of Night in the Woods: no one else is going to come and save us, so we might as well and do it ourselves. Night in the Woods doesn’t pretend it’s asking you to do something easy, but it wants you to know you’re not alone. It gives you friends every step of the way, and lets you take it one day at a time. In a gaming generation full of endless open worlds and marathon play sessions, Night in the Woods dares you to slow down and breathe every now and then. That’s something worth celebrating.

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