Night in The Woods was surprising to me. All I was expecting was just a simple platformer with talking animals, but it's much more than that.
The game is about a 20 year old collage drop-out named Mae. When she got home, she catches up with her friends, Gregg, Angus, Bea, etc. The first 4-5 days, everything's normal, but then things start to get weird, and it's Mae's job on what's going on.
There are 2 paths to take to progress the story, and that's by hanging out with Gregg or Bea. You can only have 3 hangouts each playthrough, so it's best to do Gregg's hangouts the first playthrough, and Bea's hangouts the second. Almost every hangout has a minigame, which keeps things entertaining while the story progresses.
There is even a lot of moments where it gives you 2 dialogue options when you are talking to someone, or if Mae is talking to herself. Some do have effect at some parts, but most don't do much other than change some dialogue up. It's a nice to have it, as it also gives Mae some character development as well.
The characters are the strongest part of the game. In fact, I would play this game over and over again just to see the characters again. That's how great they are. You have Mae, a 20 year old cat that dropped out of collage, and usually does some immature things for her age. Since she's short and usually act like a child, she's usually called a "Kid" other than an "Adult." Next, you have Gregg, the homosexual fox that usually plays by his own rules. He gets off work any time he wants, destroys things with Mae for fun, and usually does "crimes" (They're not really crimes, but they pretend and think about them as "crimes."). You have Angus, the homosexual bear that is Gregg's boyfriend. He had a really bad childhood. I wish I can say more about him, but you don't get to hangout out with him all that much, which sucks. And last but not least, Bea, the crocodile that had to give up her dream on going to collage, because her mom died from cancer, and her dad is getting very old. She has to take responsibility for her family and her family's store, while her dad sits on the couch all day long.
I wish I can say more about the characters, but since there is a lot more to them, it would be a quite hard to put them into words. Heck, there is even a lot more characters in the game, so it would be hard to explain all of them in a single review as well.
The artwork looks amazing. The environments are very detailed, the character design, while simple, look quite good. I do have a small issue with the character design, though. It makes it hard to know what gender some characters are. Gregg is the biggest example on this, because people think he's a girl just because Angus is his boyfriend. I know for a fact Gregg isn't a girl's name, and I already knew he was a boy, because his character design was more boy-ish than girl-ish.
The soundtrack is another big point to the game. The music fits into the game perfectly, and it's very relaxing. The music never felt out of place my whole first playthrough. It even makes me want to buy the soundtrack available right now.
Over and all, the game isn't perfect (Hell, no game is perfect), but it's one of the best story indie games I've ever played. I strongly recommend this game if you like story games like The Walking Dead.