If the name sounds familiar you might be remembering Night in the Woods from its successful Kickstarter a few years back where it not only reached its $50,000 goal but quadrupled it instead and ended the 30 day campaign with a cozy $209,375.
After many years of work, and a couple of delays, the story focused adventure/exploration hybrid Night in the Woods is set to release this fall, as announced today on the developer's twitter. Here's the trailer so you can see what all the fuss is about:
In Night in the Woods you play the roll of Mae, a college dropout who upon returning home wants nothing more from life than to go back to the careless and aimless years of her youth. Instead she finds that both her friends and the town itself have grown in their own unique directions and that the tight group she once had is now barely being held together. And if that wasn't enough to fill you with existential dread Mae also gains a sudden and unexplained ability that allows her to use astral projection which leads to the discovery of some sort of entity living in the old woods near the mine, an entity that might mean the end of all.
During daylight hours you can simply kick back, relax and try to reconnect with your friends or any of the other townsfolk that inhabit Possum Springs. Or perhaps use your new-found abilities to explore various nooks and crannies of your crumbling home town in an effort to solve the mystery of the seemingly haunted woods. While I haven't had the chance to play the demo version those that visited the recent PAX did and the general consensus is that the writing is simply brilliant. An observation I have to agree with as I look over Night in the Woods' various screenshots:
Every group has the smart-ass
The nighttime is much more interesting however as Mae's inner and outer demons manifest resulting in some supposedly spectacular and touching moments the developers wanted to keep a secret for a little while longer. What we do know is that Night in the Woods is going to be a coming-of-age tale where Mae needs to deal with the fact that she and the world around her are changing forever and that its senseless to fight against it.
A bit of a somber thought but with plenty of good dialogue and supernatural mysteries to contend with I have a feeling Night in the Woods will be well worth trying out when it finally releases this fall for the PC, Mac, Linux, PS4 and Xbox One. I've been waiting for years now so what's a few more months.