As a result, at one point in the game, they offhandedly refer to themselves as the town’s only two queer people around Mae. The aforementioned Greg and Angus are the only openly gay couple depicted in Possum Springs, and their identity as the town’s only queer couple has very much become a part of how they see themselves. It’s that very specific brand of "if you don't laugh, you'll cry" because it’s too depressing to stop and take things seriously - a common thread in queer, depressed, young adult culture right now, and it’s written in a way that feels moving and authentic. They’re just a group of social outcasts trying to have a bit of a laugh at their slightly dead-end situation, and the queer energy the group radiates warms my heart. The general malaise towards the state of the world and flirtation with light-hearted acknowledgment of how bad their own prospects look feels incredibly timely, even a few years after its initial 2017 release. They have varying levels of energy dedicated to working out what their futures will hold, and just kind of spend time together writing music about how they are happy to eventually die, so long as they die somewhere far away having lived an eventful life.
Her closest friends, with whom she spends most of the game, are Bea the chain-smoking goth crocodile, Greg the hyperactive anarchist fox, and Greg’s boyfriend Angus, a calm and reserved but thoughtful bear. Where many other games with queer protagonists are happy with their one queer character, Night in the Woods surrounds Mae with a supportive group of friends who are largely queer, or at the very least part of other groups who fall into the fringes of life in this small conservative town. Either way, her mother’s lack of support for her sexuality very much is a factor in the worsening of her other ongoing mental health issues. Mae’s sexuality isn’t a secret to herself, but it does appear to be a secret to her religious, church receptionist mother, who consistently makes comments about Mae settling down one day with a boy to have children, which imply she either does not know about her sexuality, or is disregarding it as a phase. Mae certainly self-identifies as queer, and a couple of times in the game goes out of her way not to be excluded from the narratives of other types of queer people in the town. While Mae never uses the term pansexual in game, its creator, Scott Benson, explained that while Mae has not personally known that term, it’s likely the one she would choose. She initially uses a neutral “they” pronoun to refer to their ideal date, before later elaborating that she would happily date men or women, so long as they had the right kind of personality. The first hints at Mae’s sexuality in Night in the Woods come as a result of her being asked about her ideal date. Mae feels like a very real and relatable queer young adult living with depression and potentially an undiagnosed mental health condition, and the game portrays her as just one of several examples of a queer character, even in such a tiny rural town. While the game’s surface plot centers around mysterious potentially supernatural disappearances occurring in Possum Springs, it’s much more a story about Mae coming to terms with how her hometown, the people she knew, and she herself have changed in the time she has been away.
Night in the Woods is a side-scrolling narrative adventure game in which you play as Mae Borowski, a 20-year-old college dropout/anthropomorphic cat girl reluctantly moving back to her tiny suburban home town to live in her parent’s attic. One of my favorites is Night in the Woods, an indie game about being a depressed millennial young adult coming to terms with their own identity.
I don’t make the rules.Īs someone who’s very much gay and spends most of my life playing video games, it feels like a perfect time for me to dig into my collection and replay some of my favorite games with good relatable queer characters. That means video games are gay now, you heard it here first. If you didn't know, June is both Gaming Month and Pride Month.