First Pillar: Music

The moment the game launches a vague, almost ethereal noise like gently blowing wind in a vast expanse accompanies the logos, and then your ears are treated to some of the best title music anything has had in the past decade. It's jazzy, it's despondent, it gives a sense of nihilism and rebellion all at once, while climbing to be a bit faster and even hopeful near the middle of the song. All of this in only the first three and a half minutes of a three volume, six and a half hour long soundtrack. It's a good sign, to be sure.

Constantly the music complements the atmosphere of the scene it plays to, slowly dropping out during tense conversations, shifting to new tracks based on the weather, where you are, when in the story you are, and who you're with. Listen closely to the music in the trailers for tracks that perfectly encompass the breadth of the game from start to finish in barely over a minute. Enjoy the way the music blends with environmental noises to further immerse you in the world, echoing slightly in tunnels and adding extra instruments to the track when in-game musicians are nearby. Due to these details, this game is best played with a headset as opposed to external speakers.

Alec Holowka has done an exceptional job with this music, which includes the soundtrack for the game within the game dubbed Demontower, as well as all the tracks for the two supplemental games that I also highly recommend. I listen to all of it in a partially shuffled format that mostly retains chronological order at my leisure because I'm a sucker for seamlessly blended genres.

Second Pillar: Art Style

You'll be ridin' the chariot looking at this game. From the album art to Mae's journal doodles it's all fun to gander at. There's a lot about the art style that I can't talk about without spoiling the game's meta narrative, so I'll tell you how it reinforces everything else later and focus on the broad strokes here.

Vivid colors and crisp shapes really bring out the Autumn feel, tasteful contrast accentuating every angle and detail on both the characters and the environments. differences in lighting between scenes help to set the mood, and the way lighting sources are distinguished pairs with other small details to draw you in to the world depicted onscreen. Characters kick up leaves and twigs in some places, your presence can frighten squirrels and birds if you move too quickly, fireflies dance around lamps at night, and the sounds of your steps match perfectly with the ground you're seeing. These may seem like a small feats in isolation, but when these details are spot on throughout the entire game it adds a bit of magic to the game.

Then there's the animation, from the walking and running cycles of each character to the way the fur on their arms sways with small gestures during closeups, it's all spectacular. The occasional blinks, ear twitches, and expression shifts add even more to love about these artsy graphics that deftly sidestep common trends and the uncanny valley with stylish and lively anthropomorphic animals.

Third Pillar: Genre Juggling

Do you want to play a platformer, dungeon crawler, puzzle game, runner, or rhythm game? How about a game where you dodge bottles and smash lightbulbs? One of those weirdly difficult sniping games with a shaky camera? Something that simulates you and a friend trying to stab each other in the hand? Well, I guess you could play this. Night in the Woods is technically all of those things, but that isn't really the point.

Night in the Woods juggles these gameplay elements as stylishly as it does narrative themes and musical influences, using them to enhance the experience and the plot. Some stuff is rather difficult, or even completely insane, while most sequences aren't too challenging, but it always matters, and because of context rather than shallow scores or leaderboards. You'll want to play a song well because you want Mae to make a good returning impression on her old friends. You'll try to reach new areas and solve puzzles to learn more about Possum Springs. Talking about the rest would be spoiler city, but you get the idea.

I've been playing highly competitive video games since a very young age, and it get's exhausting. After punching my billionth demon in DOOM I start to wonder what the point even is. To reach 22nd place on a leaderboard nobody cares about? Bleh. With Night in the Woods I can enjoy a motivation that transcends all that, which brings us to the next Pillar.

Penultimate Pillar: Narrative

So here's what you know from the very beginning: you're a bundle of shapes that vaguely forms a cat-person. After a couple minutes you learn that Mae is her name and she's certainly not you. Unlike the route typical immersive games take with their blank slate, vanilla protagonists, Mae is a massively complex and intriguing character in her own right, and she carries the plot forward as much as you do.

Strangely enough, this game doesn't seem to advertise that your choices matter, because a lot of the time they don't. In other games with dialogue options as expansive as those in Night in the Woods there would be all manner of buzz surrounding how much "agency" the player has, but by avoiding trying to trick players into thinking pointless choices actually matter the game can focus on making some key choices impact the final sequence. Furthermore, where you go, what you do, and who you spend your time with will determine how much dialogue pops up later and what is said. Even the things that objectively don't matter can matter to you because of the context and character development.

Bonus Points

There are boatloads of perfectly timed content and foreshadowing hidden away in optional/missable encounters and environmental details. Even the expressions characters are wearing as you approach convey a lot, since they are almost always in a standard state by default. Any variation is immediately noticeable, and this pairs with the writing to make everything feel more real. My recommendation is that you find everyone you can everywhere you can and do all of the optional hangouts. The fact that you can miss out is a part of the meta narrative, but not missing out ruins nothing and adds to the surface narrative.

Final Pillar: Characters

This is yet another win for the writing, as the conversations between characters do the most to make them feel tangible and realistic. More than that the way they talk matches their age and the zeitgeist of our time. This game takes place in 2017, and it actually feels that way. It's refreshing to stumble upon a game that succeeds at being set in current times, since using historical settings is so much easier to execute and market.

Not only do the characters come to life through their words, but also how they say them. There's no voice acting save for a few grunts and huffs, so text tells the story. It can have a particular color for certain characters, and the game hides some important characters by just giving them standard white in spite of their importance. Sometimes the font is subtly larger to show steadily growing agitation and loudness. Other times it slithers on a particular word to show it was said with a sleazy, hateable tone. Other times Mae will flip out and start yelling like a maniac, her letters jittering around in her speech bubble.

Combine the mutability of the text with expression changes, Mae huffing at the right time, and characters raising their arms or even flailing them around depending on the circumstances and you've got some truly memorable characters. They're unique, they're fun, and you'll legitimately care about them.

EDIT: I was going to write more elsewhere, but the Weird Autumn update ruined the game and injected a lot of politics so I don't care anymore.