Night in the Woods

You can’t go home again… OR CAN YOU?

Mae, the college dropout kitty that stars in the thoughtful and witty Night in the Woods is doing her darnedest to prove Thomas Wolfe wrong. Night in the Woods is a straightforward adventure game that lets puzzles take the backseat to story and one-off minigames. Its got all the telltale signs of an indie game — you can feel the personal history, nostalgia, and singular humor in every second of this delightful story.

Oh, and there’s something spooky happening out in the woods. Brace yourself — the game didn’t get the tagline “At the end of everything, hold onto anything” for nothing.

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Watch Me Play Night in the Woods

How to Play Night in the Woods

You move and you click things. It’s really quite simple. This is not a game that’s going to test your reflexes at all. It lets you focus entirely on the characters, the story, the puzzles.
For all practical purposes, you can think of Night in the Woods as an adventure game — more Telltale than Space Quest.
For the most part, you’re exploring 2D worlds like you would in a side scroller or platformer. There are often ledges or wires to jump on, people to talk with, things to interact with. And you’ll probabyl want a controller — at least I prefer it with one.
You’re Mae — a college dropout who’s just returned to her small hometown, filled with humanoid animal people that love to talk, sell snacks, and play music.
So you go around your hometown, talking with old friends, old enemies, getting lost or stuck in subway stations and finding your way out. Eventually you begin to uncover a big mystery and surprise, it involves the WOODS!
You occasionally run into puzzles that you’ll have to think through, and plenty of minigames along the way — but that’s the core of it. You’re playing through Mae’s experience of returning to her hometown, and finding that some things have changed a lot, and some things never do.
Oh yeah, and then a big mystery in the woods. I’m sure it’s spooky.