Night in the Woods

Lore & Background

Night in the Woods takes place in Possum Springs, a town populated by zoomorphic humans. The player takes the role of Mae, a young cat that has returned to Possum Springs after dropping out of college. Now living in her parents' attic, she discovers how much times have changed since the closing of the town's coal mines. She is forced to confront a horrible secret the town has hidden for decades involving not only the town's mine, but also the recent disappearance of her longtime friend Casey. Mae's friends include Bea, a cigarette-smoking crocodile and Mae's childhood friend; Gregg, a hyperactive fox; and his boyfriend, a bear named Angus. Paste magazine describes the themes covered as 'mental illness, depression, the stagnancy of the middle and lower classes, and the slow death of small town America.'

Scott Benson described the key actions for the player as 'explore, converse, see and touch', while Alec Holowka described their approach as 'narrative-focused' rather than 'gameplay-first'. Players make decisions that affect the course of the story, though Benson said, 'it's more like "do you hang out with this person?" Okay, cool. That person might not know you as well by the end of the game, but this person you hung out with, you're going to get to see their storyline.'

Prior to the release of Night in the Woods, a companion game titled Longest Night was released in December 2013 by Holowka and Benson, along with co-writer Bethany Hockenberry. In December 2014, a second supplemental game was released, titled Lost Constellation. An extended version of the game, titled the Weird Autumn edition, was released for Windows, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on December 13, 2017, and also for Nintendo Switch on February 1, 2018. It features new content not seen in the first release, as well as the supplemental games.

Reader's Guide

Night in the Woods received very favourable reviews. On Metacritic, the PS4 version has an average score of 87 from 15 critics, and the PC version has an average score of 88 from 30 critics. Praise is mainly given to the writing and characters. In Japan, where the PlayStation 4 and Switch versions were ported and published by Playism on March 28, 2019, Famitsu gave them each a score of one nine and three eights for a total of 33 out of 40. Eurogamer ranked the game 13th on their list of the 'Top 50 Games of 2017', and GamesRadar+ ranked it 1. The game's Kickstarter campaign reached its funding goal in only 26 hours, and the additional funding allowed Infinite Fall to hire animator Charles Huettner to create additional animations, and for Infinite Ammo and game developer Adam Saltsman to create a roguelike that is playable within Night in the Woods. A physical version was planned to be released through Limited Run Games, but was delayed indefinitely after the rest of the development team cut their ties with Holowka, following accusations of physical and emotional abuse by Holowka's ex-partner Zoë Quinn. Five years after the game's release, Limited Run Games would officially start accepting preorders for the physical version starting December 18, 2022 and lasting until January 29, 2023. The collector's edition includes the game, the soundtracks for both the main game and Demon Tower on CD, acrylic stands, a coin, a physical version of Mae's journal, a planisphere, glow-in-the-dark cards and sticker sheets.