QCF: Night in the Woods
o matter how old you are, there’s always going to be this unspoken acceptance between you and the friends you makes; an acceptance of who’s going to stay for the long haul, and who’s going to be a memory, if anything at all. Some of the key elements that define the human condition are ones that’re fundamentally tied to the concept of loneliness and the effects that it has on people.
This leads to a misinterpretation that the relationships we form are done from out of mutual interests and similarities, glossing over the fact that mutual hatreds and fears have a lot to do with who interact with and trust on a daily basis.
There aren’t a lot of experiences that I can think of that have evoked these ugly truths quite like Night in the Woods by Finji. The tagline of the game tells its players that at the end of everything, you have to try to hold onto anything, setting a tone that consistently sticks it to you the further you dive in. The messages and themes offered in the adventure side-scroller are poignant in their relatability to the hardships of youth in modern Americana, and struggle with mental health issues that stem from the experience.