Make it a Weird Autumn
Night in the Woods, developed by InfiniteFall, is one of the smash hits of 2017, and will soon be releasing a major update. It's also a story about going home. Though in Gone Home we find that there is no one there, in Night in the Woods, we find everyone there. Still there in the small little town of Possum Springs, Pennsylvania.
Night in the Woods, is, like Spelunky, a 2D platformer, but it's quite different in the requirements. The mode of locomotion is a lot less frantic, and there isn't really a challenge to overcome. Or rather, the challenge is within. Night in the Woods is a tale of failure. Mae Borowski drops out of college in her sophomore year and goes home. She arrives at night, with no one to meet her at the bus station. The game uses this as a nice opportunity to teach the player about jumping to solve one of the game's puzzles. From there, the jumping continues until Mae falls off a telephone pole(one of the game's favorite forms of travel), and comes face to face with a police officer who happens to be her aunt.
The game's vignettes of small town life show a young woman coming home and just wishing for everything to be how she left it. At every turn, she finds that things have changed, people have grown, and that her charms are less appreciated by some than had been before. The game asks, "Can we really go home again?"
The game's narrative aspect offers a great deal of fun and humor to match its ultimately dark tale, and happily enough, the mechanics don't slow it down a bit. Platforming puzzles aren't drawn out to a degree as to be difficult, and often are designed to make the player feel smart, such as by jumping up and down on the same tree branch to ruthlessly open a gate. Others are meant to be zany and weird, such as the dream sequences which permeate the game. Rather than a double jump the game features a triple jump system that works by making the player jump twice normally before a third, higher jump.
The games artistic style further enhances the experience, as many independent games simply do not look so beautiful. The simple rendering of the characters and backgrounds is slick, but the color choices and the way the lighting impacts each character and each environment is a wonder. It's an excellent reminder that the future of games does not necessarily lie in the 3D realism model that many AAA games have been leaning into for the past several years.
Night in the Woods invites you to travel in its beautiful world as you solve short platforming puzzles and make dialogue choices and pick who you'll spend your days with. It also offers a small but powerful cast of characters both in its main cast and the side characters that Mae meets along the way. It shows small town life in an honest portrayal, some good and some bad moments cropping up as Mae navigates her new, old life. It's a game I can't recommend enough, and definitely contends for my personal game of the year.
Night in the Woods is releasing its newest edition, a directors cut called Weird Autumn, on Dec. 13. It will also be releasing on a new platform, and owners of the PC version of the game get Weird Autumn for free, so that would be my recommended platform for those with reasonably good computers. It is available on Mac, Windows, Linux, and PlayStation 4.
Title: Night in the Woods
Price: $20
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, "new console(coming on Dec. 13)"
Skills Learned:
Platforming puzzles
Menu navigation
Night in the Woods, is, like Spelunky, a 2D platformer, but it's quite different in the requirements. The mode of locomotion is a lot less frantic, and there isn't really a challenge to overcome. Or rather, the challenge is within. Night in the Woods is a tale of failure. Mae Borowski drops out of college in her sophomore year and goes home. She arrives at night, with no one to meet her at the bus station. The game uses this as a nice opportunity to teach the player about jumping to solve one of the game's puzzles. From there, the jumping continues until Mae falls off a telephone pole(one of the game's favorite forms of travel), and comes face to face with a police officer who happens to be her aunt.
The game's vignettes of small town life show a young woman coming home and just wishing for everything to be how she left it. At every turn, she finds that things have changed, people have grown, and that her charms are less appreciated by some than had been before. The game asks, "Can we really go home again?"
The game's narrative aspect offers a great deal of fun and humor to match its ultimately dark tale, and happily enough, the mechanics don't slow it down a bit. Platforming puzzles aren't drawn out to a degree as to be difficult, and often are designed to make the player feel smart, such as by jumping up and down on the same tree branch to ruthlessly open a gate. Others are meant to be zany and weird, such as the dream sequences which permeate the game. Rather than a double jump the game features a triple jump system that works by making the player jump twice normally before a third, higher jump.
The games artistic style further enhances the experience, as many independent games simply do not look so beautiful. The simple rendering of the characters and backgrounds is slick, but the color choices and the way the lighting impacts each character and each environment is a wonder. It's an excellent reminder that the future of games does not necessarily lie in the 3D realism model that many AAA games have been leaning into for the past several years.
Night in the Woods invites you to travel in its beautiful world as you solve short platforming puzzles and make dialogue choices and pick who you'll spend your days with. It also offers a small but powerful cast of characters both in its main cast and the side characters that Mae meets along the way. It shows small town life in an honest portrayal, some good and some bad moments cropping up as Mae navigates her new, old life. It's a game I can't recommend enough, and definitely contends for my personal game of the year.
Night in the Woods is releasing its newest edition, a directors cut called Weird Autumn, on Dec. 13. It will also be releasing on a new platform, and owners of the PC version of the game get Weird Autumn for free, so that would be my recommended platform for those with reasonably good computers. It is available on Mac, Windows, Linux, and PlayStation 4.
Title: Night in the Woods
Price: $20
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, "new console(coming on Dec. 13)"
Skills Learned:
Platforming puzzles
Menu navigation
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