![]() However, it’s not a wasteland, as the gamer will come to understand. It’s a place familiar with a down-turning economy, high unemployment rates and substance abuse, among other blights. “A lot of issues like other places like malls that have declined and kind of emptied, and main streets where big, huge brick buildings that are mostly vacant or they only have a Subway in them.”Ī post-industrial town like Possum Springs is an uncommon setting for a video game. “People who play it will go, ‘Oh, there’s bits of this that look really familiar,’” Benson says. If Possum Springs sprang up out of the ground and all the residents changed from animals to humans, it would pass as a Pennsylvanian city. Possum Springs takes a lot of visual inspiration from towns like Lewistown, Altoona, Pittsburgh, Johnstown, Nanty-Glo and Bolivar the characters are combinations of Hockenberry, Benson and the people they knew growing up - almost archetypes of small-town residents. Leaves tumble down the street, cars pass by, residents stand and chat with one another, squirrels run along power lines, and the light shining from behind buildings shifts bringing Night in the Woods to life.įor some Pennsylvania gamers, Night in the Woods could feel familiar. Once Mae begins to move, however, the visual depth of the game becomes apparent. Buildings, townspeople, power lines and the sky seem to exist on a single, flattened plane - like construction paper neatly cut and arranged in a frame to depict all of these objects. The game’s point-of-view is fixed straight on, making everything appear two dimensional at first glance. Players will navigate Possum Springs and the nearby woods by completing various actions, including talking to townsfolk, reconnecting with friends, shoplifting from the mall, smashing fluorescent lights behind a convenience store, walking on power lines and (hopefully) figuring out what the heck is causing all this strange stuff to happen after the sun sets.īenson’s striking visual style, developed as an animator, applies perfectly to a video-game format. Night in the Woods’ gameplay replaces the puzzle-solving aspect of traditional adventure games and invests in exploration, relationships and story. Mae’s just this kind of dirtball kid from around the block who went to college and then dropped out, and is back hanging out, doing nothing.” She doesn’t shower throughout the entire game and that’s on purpose. ![]() ![]() “A lot of games, particularly if they have young women as the protagonist, they’re always just very, very cool or badass or whatever. “Perfect characters or aspirational characters are kind of boring,” Benson says. But she soon starts to realize that the town her parents urged her to leave has more secrets than she knew. Wayward and unsure of what the future holds for her, Mae explores the town and hangs around with her friends. 21, is centered on Mae Borowski, an anthropomorphic 20-year-old cat who returns to her hometown of Possum Springs after dropping out of college. Night in the Woods, which will be released on Feb. His previous indie-game work includes titles like Aquaria, Towerfall Ascension and Offspring Fling. Holowka works on the game’s code and musical score remotely from Winnipeg, Manitoba. The game began development after a successful Kickstarter campaign in late 2013, when the team raised its required funding in about 24 hours.īenson (animator, co-writer, co-director) and Hockenberry (researcher, co-writer) are currently residents of Pittsburgh, and have lived either in Western or Central Pennsylvania for decades. The whole studio, however, consists only of Benson, Hockenberry and indie-game veteran Alec Holowka. Night in the Woods is an indie video game being developed by game studio Infinite Fall. ![]() “I wanted to be like, ‘You’re in our video game!’” Benson says. Though they hadn’t met her before, she was familiar to Benson and Hockenberry because, as they put it, she was the human version of their video game’s main character. Scott Benson and Bethany Hockenberry were waiting in the checkout line at a Sheetz gas station in Moon Township some time ago and noticed a young woman standing in front of them. Video game still courtesy of Infinite Fall ![]()
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