What was wrong with the game (night in the Wood's I think it's called? The cute furry one) story? (I haven't played, just curious)
I wrote a short post about this before, but I didn’t really go in-depth. Basically, I had been waiting for NITW for a long time, and I was very excited to go on this coming-of-age supernatural adventure. For the most part, that’s what I got...Mostly. At the end of the day, when I play a game, I want to have an experience. I want to think back and say, “Wow, that was cool. How I did that was cool. How that happened was so clever.” In NITW, at the end of the day, I left feeling like I’d just experienced a piece of art.But not in a good way.
Look, I’m a liberal, okay? But this game? It made me roll my eyes so often. Anarchy! The police are pigs! Baby boomers are the reason nothing works right! Life sucks!
Ergo, it’s perfect demographic is the general mid-teen tumblr crowd. No one in the game has opposing views to the characters, which I think is terribly shallow; if the police can’t be trusted, show us why the character thinks that. If baby-boomers are ruining the town, show us how. But, alas. Things never get that well developed. One of my major gripes with the story in general are the characters involved in it. I know you can make different choices based on different playthroughs, but I chose to hound Beatrice. Shes a fatalistic, overworked reptile who’s friends with our main character because....
Well, they live close together.
That’s about it. It’s explicitly stated. Beatrice is generally a horrible friend to the MC throughout the game, constantly snapping at her for he unintentionally harmful things she says while refusing to tell her why it upsets her until later into the game.
And, maybe the biggest reason I felt like I’d just been to an art show instead of played a game: the entire thing was, as I understood it, a heavy-handed allegory for mental illness. Every character in the game has a different illness, aside from Agnes I think, which was fine! But you go through this entire story expecting something grand or supernatural because the story sets it up as supernatural and then (SPOILER ALERT) it turns out to be...? Some monster in a cave? But also mental illness. But the monster in the cave is causing it?
So I personally didn’t enjoy it. It felt like a game that was made for tumblr-- which, again, six years ago I’d have probably loved NITW-- and it buckled hard under the scope of the message(s) they were trying to deliver.
I ended up legitimately hating most of the side characters by the end (again, I spent most of my playthrough with Beatrice. It’s easy to say, “But I feel bad for her! Her life is so hard! She’s depressed, she has so much on her plate--” Yes, true, the game tries to build pity for her and justify her actions, but that doesn’t give her an excuse to be a dick, ya feel? I don’t know. It just was really heavy-handed and just when I thought the game was actually starting (we’d tracked down a cool cult!) Suddenly... time skip (???) and...
The art is cute, the music is nice, the aesthetic is alluring, but the story leaves a lot to be desired. Pick it up when it’s on sale and check it out-- you might have a different experience than I did.
