“...some people never stop
They're always moving on”
I listen to CG5’s remix of “Weird Autumn” on loop, and have been doing so for the past 2 years straight. Something about the song compels me, the same thing that makes me continue to return to the game it originates from, Night in the Woods. I find the song fascinating in part because we never hear about this character Weird Autumn anywhere else. She only exists in this song in the background of a mini-game: as someone who disappeared; who is “weird;” whose house in her absence remains empty, abandoned and “weird.” I’m haunted by the idea of Autumn: who she is, and what was “weird” about her. I’m also haunted by that idea of time: of someone being there one minute, and gone the next.
This ultimately hits at the heart of Night in the Woods: the themes of the relentless march of time, and an external urgent pressure to “come of age,” disrupting everything that once was familiar. The brilliance of NitW’s theming is that it pervades naturally in every level of the game: its narrative, its characters, its setting, its mechanics, and even its music.
Perhaps the best place to start regarding this idea is the place of NitW. The game takes place in Possum Springs, an old mining town that nostalgizes its past and looks with wary uncertainty towards its faltering future. Taking inspiration from the rust belt of the United States (and more specifically, creator Scott Benson’s local state of Pennsylvania), Possum Springs as a location and culture powerfully reflects contemporary concerns in similar areas today. Once a booming mining town, Possum Springs is dying. The population is aging. Local businesses are closing, and large chains are filling only some of the vacant shops left behind. The young are doing everything they can to move out and “die anywhere else.” With the major industry gone, there are limited jobs, and little prospects for how the town can “reinvent itself” to survive--a struggle many rust belt towns are facing today. The identity Possum Springs held for so long has changed, and the town doesn’t know what exactly it is anymore, or what its future will look like. In a way, Possum Springs is coming of age: questioning its placement in the world around it, and how to cope with the changes it faces.
Likewise, the game’s protagonist Mae invokes this rust belt coming of age spirit: she wants the world to be the same as it was when she left for college, only to find everyone around her has moved on, grown up, no longer considered as “kids.” Having defined herself and found some form of stability in the familiarity of place and people, she finds herself struggling to cope in a world where the old Food Donkey has closed, her parents talk about selling her childhood home, and her best friends talk about how they’re planning to move out. Mae’s behavior, the options for playing as her, and her dialogue all reinforce the portrait of someone struggling to come of age. What does coming of age mean in a place and time of uncertainty? How does one come of age--or perhaps more pointedly, should one even bother coming of age-- in a world of rapid change?
The music played in Gregg’s band further reinforces these ideas. Here I’m mainly referring to “Weird Autumn” and “Die Anywhere Else,” the only songs that have “lyrics” (that said, the soundtrack by Alec Holowka with its mostly ambling, slow beat songs nicely captures the spirit of Possum Springs). I listen to “Weird Autumn” and “Die Anywhere Else” all the time, and am always amazed at how the lyrics really invoke Possum Springs, and the restlessly exhausted spirit of the teens that still live there: the dead-end street, tired feet and home, “stuck where the past and future meet”. A particularly poignant moment in “Die Anywhere Else” asks:
“And will they ever stop to think
What was here before, no
They won't remember that I'm gone”
While this applies to the teens trying to leave the town so they can die anywhere else, this also can be read in the voice of the town itself. The life this town once had, the history that is forgotten.
I put on “Die Anywhere Else” in the car, and afterwards, without context, my husband said, “That’s a weird song.” The chorus, proclaiming, “I just want to die anywhere else,” does sound odd without context, but putting it into the landscape of Possum Springs, it makes perfect sense. These teen protagonists don’t want to live and die their entire lives, trapped in a dying small town. “Come with me, let’s die anywhere else.” Unlike Mae, the characters singing it--Bea, Gregg and Angus--have had to come of age to survive in this small town. They all work to make ends meet, saving up to escape outside of Possum Springs. While they may reminisce about being younger, or wishing they had opportunities like going to college, they have accepted that times have changed and have adapted. They have no hope for Possum Springs, and grapple with the question of if they can find hope in anything else.
While Mae’s friends may have nihilistic leanings, they are driven to take on their adult mantles and escape their town. Mae on the other hand straddles the line of child and not-child, trying to find her function in Possum Springs. The gameplay reinforces these ideas of aimlessness, mystery and loss. Part walking simulator, much of playing Night in the Woods is walking. And not just walking exactly but wandering: trapezing on electric lines to discover an abandoned building, or an old friend. Breaking into the old Food Donkey. Rediscovering an old beloved childhood playground. Through the gameplay, we, like Mae, meander. Sometimes we goof off with Gregg, or might visit a dying mall with Bea. While there are elements driving us forward in the game (characters we want to know, a mystery to solve, objectives), there are so many opportunities to make us stop, slow down, and take the world at our own pace. Mae’s laptop has a minigame called Demontower you can play on her laptop rather extensively. You can meet up with Mr. Chazokov and study constellations. You can practice stealing pretzels from the pierogi stand to feed to the mice you find in an old storage room. There are plenty of ways for you as the player to slow down time, to procrastinate from making the game progress. Like Mae, you as the player can work carefully to stall the inevitable approach of the future.
Playing as Mae, we take on the role of being both child and not-child at the same time. Sometimes it feels this way playing video games too. As someone in my late twenties, I sometimes feel like I don’t have time to play games, or that I shouldn’t, because I’m an “adult.” That I should be doing something more “important.” I watch Let’s Plays because I’m too “busy.” But I find that Night in the Woods reminds me that there’s no simple delineation between childhood and adulthood, play and purpose, or past and future. Coming of age is a constant struggle as the world changes around us. Listening to Mae, Gregg, Angus, Bea and Possum Springs itself, I’m comforted that I’m not the only one who is grappling with--and at times--fighting against the process of coming of age. That I’m not alone in looking back, longing for the before.
Resources and Recommended Media:
The Socio-Politics of Night in the Woods and the Rust Belt | Gnoggin
Night in the Woods and Nostalgia | Paste Magazine
Revisiting Night in the Woods as an Allegory for the Millenial Condition | IGN
Depression and Video Games | Sidcourse
Video game Night in the Woods tells a mysterious tale of Western Pennsylvania | Pittsburg City Paper
Meg Eden's work is published or forthcoming in magazines including Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Crab Orchard Review, RHINO and CV2. She teaches creative writing at Anne Arundel Community College. She has five poetry chapbooks, and her novel "Post-High School Reality Quest" is published with California Coldblood, an imprint of Rare Bird Books. Find her online at www.megedenbooks.com or on Twitter at @ConfusedNarwhal.
She runs the Magfest MAGES Library blog, which posts accessible academic articles about video games: https://super.magfest.org/mages-blog