In Their Wings, In Their Trees / All Things Die, Be At Peace

Introduction: Welcome to Possum Springs (“You’re Not Lost — You’re Here!”)

Night in the Woods is a 2017 video game about the end of the world, or, perhaps more accurately, an end of a world. Set in the Rust Belt in a small, rural town called Possum Springs, the game follows Mae Borowski, a college dropout who has moved home. The town is dying; the mines have dried up, the mills sit abandoned, everyone is out of work, and the population is shrinking as kids grow up, move away, and don’t come back. Mae’s friend Bea works herself to death running her father’s hardware shop, having long since given up her dreams of college; while her other friends, Angus and Gregg, work dead-end jobs at the local video rental place and convenience store, respectively. Barely able to afford a one-bedroom apartment between them, Angus and Greg both dream of running away (Benson et al., passim).

The supernatural is omnipresent throughout the game. At night, Mae dreams of ghosts and eldritch beings which take the forms of gigantic animals; at last she thinks to talk to one, an enormous housecat referred to as The Sky Cat, and it informs her that her existence is monstrous, and that it will be over soon (Part 3). Deep in the mines, The Black Goat waits, maw open, fed by a cult of the town's most conservative members, the ones still invested in the long-outdated American dream of a prospering economy, large middle class, and traditional family values. “Government didn’t care…just puttin’ in more regulations, sendin’ our jobs overseas, spendin’ our taxes on lazy people ‘n’ immigrants,” the cult’s leader raves when confronted at the game’s climax by Mae and her friends (Part 4). The cultists believe The Black Goat will help them as their society fails, their institutions crumble, and their government can’t fulfill the promises it has been making for decades. “In those days, it was the end of the world,” he says (Part 4). The past tense is inappropriate. The end of the world is still in process, both in Possum Springs and in our reality.

Part 1: Drifters, Drunks, and Delinquents

Patrick Fiorilli’s article “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Gods: Reading Night in the Woods through Mark Fisher,” discusses how Night in the Woods’ use of the strange and eerie throughout the game serves as a reflection of the unsettling effect of capitalism on the world and the human mind. Fiorilli draws on theorist Mark Fisher’s vocabulary to demonstrate Night in the Woods’ approach to its critique of capitalism; capitalism is exemplified by the “eeriness” of the dilapidated Possum Springs, ravaged by time and the failures of the economic system which promised it would keep the town prosperous. Fiorilli makes note of the game's portrayal of the coexistence between supernatural evil and banal, all-too-realistic evil (Fiorilli). Possum Springs has its share of all-too-familiar evil and suffering: broken dreams, poverty, lost jobs, cruel bosses. These things exist alongside and complement another representation of capitalistic exploitation—The Black Goat, which rests in the town’s former symbol of industry, the unplumbed depths of the mines (passim), and represents both an heir to the exploitation and destruction present in those mines since their founding and a desire to return to the old days, before the New Deal and OSHA, when sending a child to die in the coal mines was just how industry functioned and was made more profitable. 

Mae’s childhood friend Casey, a delinquent teenager deemed useless to society by the cult, is thrown to The Black Goat before the game begins. His life had no economic value, but his death did. Midway through the game, Mae witnesses one of the cultists kidnap an unnamed child, seen only in silhouette, whom we can only assume died in the same way. “We never pick noone who’ll be missed…drifters, drunks, and delinquents,” the cult’s leader informs Mae. She disagrees. “His parents put up posters!” she cries, realizing Casey was one of said “delinquents” (Part 4). Indeed, Casey’s absence is felt throughout the game, even before the player or the protagonists have any inkling as to what his true fate was. His away message greets you every morning as Mae opens up her messenger app to text her friends; she passes his poster every afternoon as she walks through town; she discusses his absence quietly with friends at the diner; she meets a group of out-of-town drifters and asks if they’ve seen Casey on their travels (they haven’t, of course) (passim). Casey is conspicuously missing, and he is missed by his friends and family. The economy may not miss those who died at its altar—whether through exploitative business practices or ancient gods—but it still leaves families who must pick up the pieces, while being told the world is better for their loved one’s absence. After all, that’s how the economy functions, and the deaths of those on the lowest tier of society are worth more to it than their continued, costly existence.

This hierarchical sorting of humans into categories—those who are acceptable sacrifices to The Black Goat (the drifters, drunks, and delinquents) at the bottom, those who are worthy of life in the middle, and, at the top, those who get to make these delineations (the cultists themselves)–is reminiscent of Rosi Braidotti’s analysis of the failures of humanist philosophy and morality. In chapter 6 of her book Post Human Knowledge (“On Affirmative Ethics”), Braidotti states the “humanity is not a neutral term” but that “social categories such as class, race, gender and sexual orientation, age, and able-bodiedness…are key factors in framing the notion and policing access to something we might call ‘humanity’” (Braidotti 159-160). Within Night in the Woods, the victims of The Black Goat’s cult are the marginalized; while the races of their victims cannot be determined due to Night in the Woods’ race-blind art style, they do explicitly target disenfranchised members of society, particularly members of the lower class, unhoused people, and children (Part 2, Part 4). The game also posits through the metaphor of The Black Goat and its cult that capitalism is itself an entity, which exists simultaneously outside and at the top of the hierarchy; it is the entity which directs those at the top of the hierarchy to do harm to those below them, and which requires said harm to perpetuate itself. 

The idea that society is itself an organism has been brought up before in conjunction with Lovecraft’s work, which is clearly a forebear of, and model for, Night in the Woods. Hisup Shin discusses this thematic topic in his article “Lovecraft and matters of weird realism: Decadence, architecture, and alien materiality.” As he writes:

Underlying this [work] is the idea that society is an organic entity subject to the cycle of life and death. All the ordeals the Old Ones endured are represented…as the direct cause of the slip into the decadent in the…arts [present in the Old Ones’ civilization]. Decadence in this view does not just amount to a degradation of skills but points to the fatigue and ambivalence in the Old One’s outlook on culture and civilization. (60)

As does Lovecraft, Night in the Woods treats civilization as an organism capable of death, one which feeds the eldritch god connected to it—albeit in contrast to Lovecraft’s work, the decaying civilization in Night in the Woods is not an ancient undersea city, but our own society. Furthermore, the cause of this death is not represented by a decline in the arts, but a depletion of its industrial products; the mines are empty, and there is no refilling them. The cult longs to reignite their town’s industry through their pact with an Old One, but there is no healing the fatal wound the society The Black Goat represents has suffered.

Indeed, it is clear that the cult’s efforts are failing, and that their god cannot keep their town prosperous. Possum Springs is in the middle of an ending and undoing, a microcosm of the slow apocalypse due to climate change and societal decay which is occurring all over the world. Mae is informed by The Sky Cat that there is a “hole in the center of everything,” which is growing and will consume her and all she cares about (Benson et al., Part 3). The hole is personified by the pit in the mine The Black Goat resides in, but metaphorically it could be any number of things: global warming, economic trouble, death, perhaps even universal entropy. More generally, it represents the end of everything, whatever everything means to Mae or the player.

Part 2: Shapes

Mae Borowski begins Night in the Woods adrift, having dropped out of college to move back in with her parents, harboring no life plans, aspirations, or prospects. The reason for Mae’s sudden return home is not revealed until the final act of the game. The long and short of it is this: Mae has a derealization disorder which causes her to perceive the world as dead matter made up of nonsensical shapes. She struggles to maintain relationships and function in unfamiliar environments due to her perception of reality, and finds her disorder doesn’t manifest as often when she is in a familiar environment interacting with familiar people (Part 4). Mae’s interaction with the eldritch Sky Cat in one of the many dream visions she experiences throughout the game seems to confirm that this perception is at least somewhat reflective of reality as it truly is. “You are atoms,” it says to her, “and your atoms are not caring if you are existing. Your atoms are monstrous existence” (Part 3). Later, as Mae lies in a hospital bed after a first encounter with the cult in the woods, she falls deeper into this feeling of despair. “It’s dead,” she mumbles to herself. “What’s dead, honey?” her mother asks. “Everything,” she replies (Part 4).

This way of viewing the world is thought-provoking and lends itself to a posthuman interpretation, although the game isn’t saying this way of viewing reality is inherently correct. Nevertheless, The Sky Cat gives us an unusual reason to reject anthropocentrism: rather than sharing importance with other ways of being, we acknowledge that there is no “important” way to be, as we are all simply different configurations of atoms, simply random shapes the universe happened to assemble. Proving The Sky Cat right or wrong is ultimately not something Night in the Woods can do, but the game does provide us with a framework for how to approach existence and ourselves even with feelings of nihilism threatening to overcome our sense of urgency and proactive spirit as agents. While we may simply be atoms, “Everything” isn’t truly dead, because we are active agents in the universe. “Everything” will not be dead until we are, so while we are alive it’s essential to remember that. In her emotional revelation, deep in the mines, Mae realizes as much:

I get it. This won't stop until I die. But when I die, I want it to hurt. When my friends leave, when I have to let go, when this entire town is wiped off the map, I want it to hurt. Bad. I want to lose. I want to get beaten up. I want to hold on until I'm thrown off and everything ends. And you know what? Until that happens, I want to hope again. And I want it to hurt. Because that means it meant something. It means I am something, at least... pretty amazing to be something, at least… (Part 4)

Implicit within Mae’s speech is that everything will one day end. The hole in the center of everything of which The Sky Cat spoke, whatever we interpret it to be, will eventually consume all. Still, Night in the Woods tells us that hoping is still worthwhile, and that even if it hurts, the fact that we as active agents are able to feel that hurt means something in the grand scheme of things. Despite it all, the coming apocalypse is no reason to give up prematurely.

Part 3: The End of Everything

Night in the Woods is a game about the apocalypse, although it’s not set during an apocalypse. I would argue it’s a pre-apocalypse game, one about the mechanisms and anxieties of an apocalypse one can see on the horizon but doesn’t have the power or resources to avert or even ameliorate in any way. Mae listens to her miserable peers commiserate about their horrible jobs and dead-end lives, learns that her parents’ home may be repossessed due to their inability to pay their second mortgage, and watches businesses close and unemployment skyrocket. But what can she possibly do? A feeling of helplessness pervades the game’s story, only sharpened in the climax as Mae and her friends chase Eide, one of the cultists, to the bottom of the mine seeking answers, only to end up being held at gunpoint by the cult at the edge of The Black Goat’s maw, an exaggerated version of the slower and less tangible death of the soul the denizens of Possum Springs are undergoing throughout the game. Trapped, the four protagonists are offered the opportunity to join the cult, which they reject out of hand. Yet, the cult decides to spare them, as they are deemed contributors to the town’s economy and no threat to the cultists whom they will not be able to identify to the police because of the low light and their hooded disguises. The protagonists are permitted to leave, but they do so shaken, horrified and enraged by the revelation of their friend Casey’s fate at the bottom of the mine, and feeling even more helpless than they had before (Part 4).

In Posthuman Knowledge, Braidotti discusses the concept of territorialization, alongside the associated concepts of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. Territorialization is our perception of our reality, including what we feel is possible (Braidotti). Society has beaten down on the inhabitants of the game’s world so much that they no longer feel it is possible to alter their lives for the better; despite some notable attempts at rebellion, such as a poem one of Mae’s neighbors writes where she expresses a desire to “burn [the elite’s] silicon city to the ground,” (Part 3) Mae and her friends feel trapped and unable to effect meaningful change in their society, whether in the realm of social/financial inequity or the realm of murder cults. Deterritorialization is a shake-up, a reassessment of reality and what we had previously considered unchangeable. Reterritorialization is the process by which a new reality with new possibilities is established and accepted.

As the group leaves the mine, Eide decides to follow them, angered by an injury he received earlier when Gregg shot him with a crossbow. The protagonists finally have an opportunity to fight back and are able to break the elevator, which decapitates Eide and causes a cave-in, trapping the cultists at the bottom of the mine. This act causes them to reassess their reality and its possibilities, i.e., de- and reterritorialization. As they try to find an exit from the collapsed mine, Mae briefly blacks out and has a vision of The Black Goat, whom she angrily tells that she will keep fighting for her friends and world, even if it is ultimately futile as The Sky Cat and so many others have tried to convince her. She regains her strength and is able to climb to the top of an abandoned well and seek help for her friends, a symbolic ascension from the depths of despair and apathy. At the top, she is greeted by her friend Germ, who has heard them yelling and goes to get a rope to retrieve Gregg, Angus, and Bea. The group asks Germ to blow up the well with dynamite, actively ensuring the cult remains buried at the bottom of the mine (Part 4).

At the end of the day, the slow apocalypse has not been averted or even stopped. While the cult and its members are now destroyed and unable to abduct and sacrifice the town’s “undesirables,” the underlying system The Black Goat represented is still present both in Mae’s world and ours. However, at the end of the game, Mae and Gregg reflect that the cult is gone, and it’s their doing: “[Things are] gonna be different because we were here,” (Part 4) referring to the defeat of the cult and the effect it will likely have on the town. The enormous shake-up in their perception of their reality has helped them undergo deterritorialization followed by reterritorialization, and they now consider themselves active players in reality rather than sufferers of it. The interactive nature of games as a medium means the player has the chance to feel this shake-up more deeply as well.

Player agency in games causes the player to relate differently to a narrative than if they had simply read or watched the story passively. In his article “‘If anyone’s going to ruin your night, it should be you’: Responsibility and affective materiality in Undertale and Night in the Woods”, Kevin Veale discusses this effect as it manifests in Night in the Woods. In the opening of the article, he effectively states his point:

Both Undertale and NITW are highly conscious of these dynamics and use affective materiality to encourage players to reflect on the consequences of their decisions in multiple arenas: within the context of the game, their engagement with other games and their engagement with the wider world. In doing so, both games apply storytelling techniques that distinguish playing video games from the experience of other media forms and encourage an empathetic engagement with their fictional storyworlds. (Veale)

While Veale is more concerned with the player’s engagement with Mae as a character and their increased empathetic connection to her struggles and the struggles of her town, it's not hard to see that when the player is actively engaging with and truly empathizing with Mae’s struggle, they are more likely to feel the same sense of reorienting that she goes through, more likely to consider the world in new and transformative ways. This enhanced empathetic connection to Mae and the entire town of Possum Springs is important to ensuring the player is able to make her emotional revelation their own, and to help the game serve as an effective vessel for communicating its ideas and ultimate message of hope in spite of the hurt, and peace in spite of the coming end.

Conclusion: All Things Die, Be At Peace

Night in the Woods begins with a screen of text that sets the setting and scene of the game, with the player able to make certain choices changing which aspects of the town’s and Mae’s background are discussed. In the text, the death of Mae’s grandfather is recounted, and the reader is asked to choose which line of poetry he liked to quote as he lay in his hospital bed. Each option corresponds to one of the game’s cosmic presences: The Sky Cat’s indifference to existence and dismissal of humanity’s quest for meaning receives the line “They went looking for the gods / And died in lonely places” (Prologue). The Black Goat’s hunger and hollow promises of averting the apocalypse receives the line “They feared death / So they ate the young” (Prologue). There’s one more god we haven’t talked about yet, The Forest God, who appears to Mae several times as a janitor who continuously makes references to his attempts to “fix a hole” (passim). The Forest God is a manifestation of peace and acceptance, of the game’s ultimate conclusion that the world will end, of our and Mae’s conclusion that we should continue to hope and take solace in the knowledge that even if the end hurts, the fact that we were here and could feel that hurt means something. The Forest God’s line of poetry is as follows: “In their wings, in their trees / All things die, be at peace” (Prologue). One day our existence will cease, and someday all active agents will cease to be and entropy will claim the universe. Night in the Woods tells us that nihilism will get us nowhere, that peace is a necessary first step to find the strength needed to face the end of everything.

Works Cited

Benson, Scott et al. Night in the Woods. Infinite Fall, 2017.

Braidotti, Rosi. “Chapter 6: On Affirmative Ethics.” Posthuman Knowledge, 2022.

Fiorilli, Patrick. “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Gods: Reading Night in the Woods through Mark Fisher.” Game Studies, gamestudies.org/2201/articles/fiorilli. Accessed 3 Nov. 2023.

Shin, H. “Lovecraft and matters of weird realism: Decadence, architecture, and alien materiality.” Studies in American Fiction, vol. 49, no. 1, Spring 2022, pp. 51–70 https://doi.org/10.1353/saf.2022.0002

Veale, Kevin. “‘If Anyone’s Going to Ruin Your Night, It Should Be You’: Responsibility and Affective Materiality in Undertale and Night in the Woods.” Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, vol. 28, no. 2, Apr. 2022, pp. 451–67. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565211014434.