Night in the Woods

Editor’s Note: This entry and its image gallery contain spoilers.

About

Night in the Woods is an adventure game developed by Infinite Fall, a studio founded by game designer Alec Holowka, and animator/illustrator Scott Benson. In the game, players explore the hometown of the protagonist Mae, an anthropomorphic cat who recently dropped out of college.

History

On October 22nd, 2013, a Kickstarter^[1] for Night in the Woods was created by Holowka and Benson, which reached its $50,000 funding goal in under 26 hours. Over the next month, the campaign earned over $200,000, allowing the developers to create additional animations and for Infinite Ammo and game developer Adam Saltsman to create a dungeon crawler minigame Demontower that is playable within Night in the Woods.

On December 15th, 2016, a trailer for the game was released on YouTube (shown below). On February 21st, 2017, the game was officially released for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux and PlayStation 4 systems.

Supplemental Games

There were two supplemental games released after the Kickstarter campaign. First was a companion game called Longest Night (shown below, left), which was released in December 2013, and a second game titled Lost Constellation (shown below, right), was released in December 2014.

Gameplay

In the game, players control the protagonist Mae as she runs, jumps and solves puzzles in her hometown Possum Springs. Additionally, Mae must interact with her family and the populace of the town, who are all depicted as various other anthropomorphic animals.

Online Presence

In September 2013, the @NightInTheWoods^[6] Twitter feed was created, followed by the official Night in the Woods Facebook page the next month. Within four years, the Twitter garnered upwards of 30,900 followers and the Facebook^[5] page received more than 10,400 likes.

Fandom

On November 23rd, 2013, the /r/NightInTheWoods^[2] subreddit was launched for discussions about the game, gathering more than 3,700 subscribers over the next four years. On March 30th, 2017, the Night in the Woods Edits Tumblr^[3] blog was launched. The following month, the Accurate Night in the Woods Quotes Tumblr^[4] was created.

On YouTube

YouTuber Jacksepticeye has produced several gameplay videos featuring Night in the Woods, with each video accumulating upwards of one million views.

Other YouTubers have uploaded covers of the song "Die Anywhere Else" from the video game's soundtrack (shown below).

Reception

The game was released to positive reviews online, having received a Metacritic^[7] score of 88 as of June 2017.

Search Interest

External references