Game review: Night in the Woods – brilliant adventure game perfectly captures the feeling of being young
Human foibles and the dread of growing up: Night in the Woods is one of those games you lose yourself in, and somehow become all the better when you emerge from the other side
Infinite Fall
4.5 stars
Getting old isn’t easy. One day, you wake up realising everything’s changed and life has caught up with you. That feeling of being young – that crazy mix of excitement, confusion, fear and discovery – is gone forever and you can’t help but long for it.
That’s kind of how I felt playing Night in the Woods (for PC, Mac, Linux and PlayStation 4), a brilliant adventure game that perfectly captures the feeling of being young. Its world is populated by anthropomorphic animals and players take on Mae, a college dropout cat who’s just moved back to her small hometown.
Days are spent wandering about, chatting with parents and neighbours, hanging with friends when they’re not at their mundane jobs, and generally trying to find a sense of purpose, or maybe just a bit of fun. It may sound frivolous, but it’s helped by its somewhat deceiving “visual novel” tag and particularly solid writing.