5/11/2023 0 Comments Way to the woods e3![]() Holowka noted that 'she didn't have as much personality.' Night in the Woods was originally conceived as starring a human girl alone in the woods. Mae's wry observations about the subway tunnel feeling like a retirement home, her enthusiasm about her pal Gregg's theft of a lawn gnome ("Should we throw it off the roof?" "Is that even a question?"), and the most epic impromptu existential debate about the metaphorical importance of donuts you'll ever hear gives Night in the Woods a plucky charm that shines through all the broken dreams permeating this autumnal town and its wide berth of inhabitants. The cutesy character design and believably jokey dialogue add a lot of levity to Mae's identity and psychological crisis about growing up simultaneously too fast and too slow. It quickly becomes apparent that this is a very melancholy affair, but it's not all doom and gloom in suburbia. A moody fellow classmate whines about her parents sending her to a therapist so she has to write her thoughts down in a journal: a confession Mae relates all too well to, as - what do you know - they go to the same doctor! Mae's former high school art teacher advises her to get out of town while she's still young, a 29-year-old telephone operator suggests the same on her smoke break, while one little girl says she's not allowed to talk to Mae as her mother told her that our heroine once "hurt somebody" and "no one knows when you might do it again." With nothing better to do, I make her stroll about town making small talk with the locals. This somber sense of unease is ubiquitous through this relatively uneventful day in the life of Mae. ![]() Her next thought bubble: "That was not a joke about her mother." Oh man. Upon heading towards a graveyard Mae thinks to herself, "I feel like you might need Bea for the full graveyard experience," suggesting an old, possibly goth, high school drinking buddy. One minute her mom is telling her she's tool old to be jumping around, while the next a grumpy neighbor scolds her and her "kid" friend, to which she replies, "We're adults and we run the world now."Īs I slink my way through the city, it becomes clear that a lot has changed in Possum Springs while Mae's been gone. Mae's in an awkward, transitional period between being an adolescent and adult. These twee tweaks to the world suggest a far-flung fantasy, but Night in the Woods' world soon begins to resemble our own.Īssuming the role of Mae, a feline who's recently dropped out of college only to move back home with her folks in the suburban town of Possum Springs, we listlessly stroll through the streets on a bright summer day. An early anecdote about a girl electrocuted by a downed power line who's since lost the ability to use adjectives hints at a particularly silly setting, and, in true feline form, you're able to leap several feet into the air. All the people are animals, for starters. On the surface, Night in the Woods might not look like our world. While the medium excels at showing us a life we'll never lead, indie developers Alexander Holowka and Scott Benson's upcoming adventure, Night in the Woods, reflects a slice of life most of us have led: that of a wayward 20 year old. And occasionally these are dis-empowering satirical situations as we saw in games like Papers, Please or The Stanley Parable. ![]() ![]() Sometimes they're more abstract adventures like trotting through majestic, magical landscapes as in Journey. Often these are empowering fantasies like saving the world and fighting monsters. Games, as a medium, allow us to experience things we don't get to in our everyday lives.
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