How 'Night in the Woods' Captures the Charming Boredom of Suburbia

There's a comforting rhythm to playing Night in the Woods, a totally chill game about life's little existential crises. Each morning, you wake up, throw on some cat boots, see what friends are online, talk with your mother, and walk around the pleasantly boring town of Possum Springs. Generally speaking, you explore the same handful of spots every day, and talk with the same handful of people. But it's a peaceful kind of repetition, one that reminds me of what it's been like to settle into my home over the past year, and develop a relationship with a neighborhood.

Besides the times I've crashed with my parents to save money, I've never lived in suburbia. While living on my own, adulthood has always in one city or another, be it San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Chicago. Maybe others had a different experience, but in all my city stops, I almost never got to know my neighbors, unless it was someone banging on my door (or ceiling) telling us to shut up.

Despite being surrounded by people, it felt anonymous. Everyone went about their routine, but personal encounters, getting to know people, wasn't common.

In Night in the Woods, set in a small town built on routine and tradition, you almost always know where to find someone. Gregg will be at the snack shop and itching to commit crimes, Selmers will be hanging out on her stoop with an upsetting poem to share, Lori will be hanging out on the rooftops, ready to make fun of you for being an "adult" but secretly seeking advice. Each day, you learn a little bit more about these people, as you wake up and do your rounds.

Besides ushering a human life into the world last summer, my wife and I managed to put enough money away to buy our first house. It's something we've dreamed about for a long time, and one of the key reasons we left our life behind in San Francisco. You can read all sorts of arguments for or against the idea of buying a home, but none of those mattered to us; we wanted a big ass backyard, we wanted to own a home, and life is short, so we bought one.

The house we found is situated in a lovely, peaceful neighborhood not too far from where I grew up. I work from home, which means I spend most of my day in a room, staring at a computer screen. One of my chances to escape the monotony is walking my dog every few hours, which allows my pet to relieve themselves and yours truly an opportunity to seek out human contact. Or, at least, fresh air.

In the nine months we've had the house, I've developed a routine similar to Mae Borowski. There are people who I can, on any given day, know that I'll run into. But Mae doesn't speak with everyone in Night in the Woods; plenty of Possum Springs residents zip by her. On my walks, there are those same kinds of relationships: friends, people you know just enough to justify a conversation, folks who are strictly on a hand-waving basis only, neighbors that force you onto the other side of the street because they'll talk your ear off, and the elusive headnod neighbor, someone you only feel comfortable shaking your head towards.

There's the neighbor right next door, whose two kids are often playing in front of the house, but the parents are never around. Sometimes the mother will sit at the front of the garage, sipping a beer and slowly burning through a cigarette. I've never found a way to say hello, even though I'm very much into sipping beers.

There's the neighbor a few houses down, who you can always find munching on a cigar, no matter the time of day. He's a nice man, one who regularly invites me into his garage to have a beer and watch Cubs games, but who also started a sentence "I don't mean to be racist, but" before doing, well, exactly what you think he might do. My wife and I locked eyes at the time, a knowing "oh shit" glance, while we waited for the story to pass. It was one of those situations where you're supposed to step in and say "Hey buddy, that's not okay," but it's a lot easier to say you're going to do something like that, and rationalize that you'd just moved in.

(Also, confronting your moral failings is uncomfortable. This situation happened long before Trump's election, in a distant past where Democratic incrementalism seemed reasonable and it was easier to handwave away these types of incidents. "They're just old, man." It'd be difficult to tell my daughter I'm doing everything to make the world better if I gave that a pass again. Good luck, future Patrick.)

There's the countless houses that look exactly like ours—our area is made up of three different styles, basically, just copied and pasted everywhere—and I'm always hoping they'll leave their garages open. I've never had a garage before, so I'm always curious what other people do to organize it. The amount of actual joy I get out of seeing a garage open while on a walk is, frankly, upsetting.

There's the neighbor who, over the summer, set up a projector in their garage and would screen sports games and movies. They waved at us one time, which should have been our cue to introduce ourselves, but the moment passed and I have no idea how to find it again. They seem nice. Does this make me sound desperate?

There's the neighbors who clearly have a pool in their backyards, and though I do not have a pool, it's my mission to become friendly enough to become pool bros.

Day to day, not much changes on my walks. Sometimes, there's a moving truck. Other times, I catch a neighbor walking into their home and we exchange a glance, since it's the first time we've seen each other. One time, when I ventured a little further than usual, I came across a car with an elderly man in it—but he wasn't moving. Initially, I walked past him, felt weird about it, then creepily took a closer look at the car, and realized he was breathing. That was weird. Glad he's okay.

I take comfort in knowing these walks are usually mundane, but that every time I take one, it's a building block in the larger story of being part of this area.

Mae has a sketchbook in Night in the Woods, a way of collecting her thoughts about the people she encounters. While I'm not carrying a physical notebook around with me, my brain is doing the same thing, slowly building profiles about the people around me. I usually walk the same route every day, though once in awhile, I'll take a left instead of a right, and find myself with a new set of mysteries.

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