Night in the Woods is a game about many things, but for me, it is all about coming back home. Mae Borowski, college dropout, returns to her hometown of Possum Springs, to find that life has just moved on without her.
The sheer weirdness of this feeling might be familiar to you if you ever experienced something similar. You return and it both feels like everything's still kind of the same and yet, everyone moved on without you. Your home and friends have changed and hell, so have you. You're on the outside, looking in.

There is some pain involved in this process. You don't just drop out of college all of a sudden, and there are allusions to some kind of incident which happened before Mae left town. Just like in real life, bad things happen to people and leave a mark, and many of the game's characters are struggling with their own issues.
Besides, Possum Springs is certainly not what it once was, ever since the coal mines closed down. And let's not forget that there is something out there in the woods...

There's a lighthearted playfulness to the game that lets you forget its dark undertones every so often. Whether you explore Possum Springs by way of its overhead telephone lines, raise a bunch of little rats you found, play a round of Demon Tower (a full game-within-the game!), go to band practice, or talk to that weird homeless guy outside the church grounds - apparently, Night in the Woods captures that midwestern smalltown vibe quite perfectly, and Possum ...