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NitW rulz ok (NitW Review Part 2)
5 years ago
Don't do it first. Do it better.
But wait, that's not all! I ended up having so much to say about this game that I couldn't fit it in one review, so here's part 2 of the side content.
Demontower
Did I say "there's almost no actual gameplay?" Hah! Yes there is, it's just pretty much all contained in Demontower, and boy is it good.
The Demontower minigame/sidequest is so good it warrants playtime even if there were no achievements related to it. Granted, that's what I said about going around and talking to as many people as possible as often as possible, but this is a whole different kind of game. The oldschool pixel graphics, more excellent music that sounds like it came straight out of a Sega Genesis (don't get me wrong, I absolutely love both Genesis and SNES music, but my nostalgia roots run thickest in the Genesis), the controls that are easy to learn and master, Palecat just plain has a cool design, and a difficulty curve that I found to be just right...even if it can get pretty cheap sometimes. I also have to say it has one of the creepiest things in NitW, visually speaking.
I don't know how many of us spent time on Newgrounds.com when it was primarily a Flash, and sometimes music, site (and I'm still trying to grasp the idea of it being an art site now after the mass Tumblr exodus, let alone for furry stuff), but in the early to mid-2000s, before Youtube, it (and Homestar Runner) was my main go-to place for animated entertainment from my high school years to the tail end of college. Had this been released as a Flash game on NG, it would have been one of its all-time classics.
Tips
* The only tip you may really need is something I found out by accident because it makes no sense: You can dodge into projectiles (until they explode). The game gets a lot easier when you know that.
* The mask guys with knives go crazy when you get the key. Consider leaving them alive; they drop health then.
* Don't kill the bird guy in the hood. You don't have to leave them alive, but if you're kind of a completionist like me, you may be glad you did.
* Enemies that shoot fireballs can kill other enemies (and themselves, but don't bet on it).
* Pots can contain health even if they don't have a pink glow.
* Beware of blood moats. Fall in one and you can get juggled to death.
Pumpkin Head Guy and other songs
Eff. That. Song. Okay no but really.
One thing that I enjoyed more than I expected is the rhythm minigames; you start with a single song in Mae's room and more unlock as the game progresses. They're played Guitar Hero-style, and I wasn't really looking forward to them as I tried playing Guitar Hero a few times and...it didn't go very well. In fact, I'm not very good at rhythm games. To borrow a bit of John Mulaney's standup, my brain is good at them: I can memorize and carry a tune just fine, but when it becomes part of a video game, then my brain has to outsource the job of not just singing the song or just recreating it however I want to, but rather has to play it in a specific way, to my not-especially-rhythmic hands.
And yet, I've played and loved, for example, Elite Beat Agents. I can now add Night in the Woods to the list of games that either are rhythm games or have rhythm games in them that I love. As has been said of all the game's other music before, the songs themselves are catchy and well done, and all it really takes is a little practice for most of them. By my third time through the game, I was playing songs in Mae's room just for the fun of it and was even singing along to them (especially my favorite, Weird Autumn), and I nailed the extra songs not played at band practice that I'd never played before on my first try.
Sound good? Well you can almost throw all of that out the window, because now we're going to talk about the only part of the game that's actually seriously hard: Pumpkin Head Guy.
You know how I said I'm not good at rhythm games? Well, it didn't take long for me to enjoy Night in the Woods so much that I resolved to 100% it. Every achievement, every conversation (or at least almost every one), take in everything I can because it's worth the time. There's one achievement that requires you to do "pretty good" at each band practice (and only at band practice; playing in Mae's room doesn't count, which makes the "hold Y to save and quit" essential). I was not looking forward to that one, given my suckiness at rhythm games, but the first couple songs were easy enough.
Then came Pumpkin Head Guy.
After watching a video to get things down, the first part of the song is still easy with some practice once you know what you're doing. Then there's the bass solo. I am jealous of those of you with rhythmic hands. My hands type accurately and quickly, but they are not good for music.
For almost a month and a half, I was stuck on this part. To be fair, I wasn't playing every day anymore thanks to problems at work kind of ruining my mood and being at such a frustrating part of the game didn't help things. In fact, I could go a week or more without playing, and even when I did it would only be a couple tries and I'd toss the controller in frustration.
With my problem-solving skills sharpened by my work experiences over the last couple of years, I tried approaching the problem from different angles. I read tips from people. Then I wrote the bass solo notes down to try to memorize them, or just look aside and read them if that helped me not panic when the song got to that part and all these notes were coming at me. Then when I kept losing my place in the song, I broke the notes into sets of eight to make memorizing them easier...and noticed they weren't just a jumble of random notes but they indeed had patterns in them, which helped a lot. Then I downloaded the video of the song and tried reproducing the notes as they played in the video to see if rote memorization helped more.
Finally, I did it. Sort of. Well, not really, but I just wanted to get on with the damn game already.
Long and the short of it is, the rhythm games surprised me with how much I enjoyed them, and once I got over how much PHG stressed me out, I was playing them for fun again. Except for that one. Well y'know what I give a grudging respect to that one.
Tips for Pumpkin Head Guy
* Here are the notes for the bass solo, or at least how I have them written, I'm pretty sure they're accurate (see the patterns?). I remapped my 3 and 4 strings to 8 and 9. An underscore (_) notes a change in tempo.
82921281
21982812
82921281
21982891
82_92182892828_21922_8121
* If you just can't do it and want the achievements, consider making a copy of your save file (the player.dat file, NOT persist.dat) at band practice and continue with the game. Make another copy of your save in Mae's room, then practice PHG in Mae's room until you feel confident. Put the band practice copy of your save back in your game and do it. That way, if you fail, you can put your Mae's room save back in and practice some more; it takes a lot less time to start playing in Mae's room than it does to get through the dialogue in band practice.
* Give up? You can always cheat and use a keyboard/macro recorder, which I admit with less shame than I expected to feel that I did. As of this review, this still works; it took me a few tries to get the timing right but it worked: https://www.reddit.com/r/NightInThe....._a_autohotkey/
Tips for Songs in General
* As I said before, to get the good journal doodles and the achievement, you "only" have to get about 90% of the notes right, or so I hear, but you do have to get the resulting "pretty good" from Gregg at band practice. If you don't, use "hold Y to save and quit" before you leave practice and your game saves.
* Whether you play the actual game with a keyboard or a controller, I strongly suggest using a keyboard for the rhythm minigames and remapping the bass strings so you can use two fingers on each hand to play them. Do what you like, but I found it easiest to play the songs with string 1 and 2 still as the 1 and 2 keys, but strings 3 and 4 remapped to the 8 and 9 keys. You might have to mess with the options menu for the notes to actually show the remapped keys, I'm not sure how exactly I got it to work but I might have had to remap the 3 and 4 keys to 8 and 9 and then also had to map a couple of other keys to them.
* I only had this problem with PHG, but if you're having a hard time with the songs, you may consider turning the game's music off while you play them so you can focus on the notes.
* Stay calm. Just that simple: Staying calm and enjoying the music will make it easier and more fun to play it.
* I overlooked this until I was in the epilogue of the game for the last time, but once a certain song that Mae regrets existing is mentioned, try playing it. It got one last big laugh out of me.
Longest Night
Not a lot to say here, it's the first thing Infinite Fall put out after NitW was successfully Kickstarted to show they were working on something. It's just a ten-odd-minute cutscene, but it's still worth playing, before or after the game, to see what kinds of things they wanted to do and some of this did indeed end up in the final game. Like the main game, it's simple, well-written, funny, insightful, and gets pretty twisted...and still has nice music, even if it's just one song.
Lost Constellation
Much like Longest Night, I don't have a lot to say about this that I haven't said at greater length about the main game. That's kind of the point: It's sort of a proto-Night in the Woods. But even this was already showing signs of what the game would be, or at least what it would be if it were a fairy tale, and I just love it. Knowing the people who made Night in the Woods could made a game just as good (if much, much shorter) while keeping the basic concept intact and all the things that would later make Night in the Woods what it is, even if it has a very different setting, really says something about them. It's also endearing to see some of the often-spoken-of bond between Mae and Granddad from when Granddad was still alive.
Once again, and for maybe the last time, the music is great, in fact there were times when I just stood in one place to listen to the music and admire the scenery. Doubly in fact, I said that Night in the Woods has some nice scenery, especially in nature. This whole game takes place in nature. I think you get where I'm going with this.
The only "tip" I can give from the one point I got a little stuck is to, when you reach a point where you can't go on alone, keep an eye on the trees.
Demontower
Did I say "there's almost no actual gameplay?" Hah! Yes there is, it's just pretty much all contained in Demontower, and boy is it good.
The Demontower minigame/sidequest is so good it warrants playtime even if there were no achievements related to it. Granted, that's what I said about going around and talking to as many people as possible as often as possible, but this is a whole different kind of game. The oldschool pixel graphics, more excellent music that sounds like it came straight out of a Sega Genesis (don't get me wrong, I absolutely love both Genesis and SNES music, but my nostalgia roots run thickest in the Genesis), the controls that are easy to learn and master, Palecat just plain has a cool design, and a difficulty curve that I found to be just right...even if it can get pretty cheap sometimes. I also have to say it has one of the creepiest things in NitW, visually speaking.
I don't know how many of us spent time on Newgrounds.com when it was primarily a Flash, and sometimes music, site (and I'm still trying to grasp the idea of it being an art site now after the mass Tumblr exodus, let alone for furry stuff), but in the early to mid-2000s, before Youtube, it (and Homestar Runner) was my main go-to place for animated entertainment from my high school years to the tail end of college. Had this been released as a Flash game on NG, it would have been one of its all-time classics.
Tips
* The only tip you may really need is something I found out by accident because it makes no sense: You can dodge into projectiles (until they explode). The game gets a lot easier when you know that.
* The mask guys with knives go crazy when you get the key. Consider leaving them alive; they drop health then.
* Don't kill the bird guy in the hood. You don't have to leave them alive, but if you're kind of a completionist like me, you may be glad you did.
* Enemies that shoot fireballs can kill other enemies (and themselves, but don't bet on it).
* Pots can contain health even if they don't have a pink glow.
* Beware of blood moats. Fall in one and you can get juggled to death.
Pumpkin Head Guy and other songs
Eff. That. Song. Okay no but really.
One thing that I enjoyed more than I expected is the rhythm minigames; you start with a single song in Mae's room and more unlock as the game progresses. They're played Guitar Hero-style, and I wasn't really looking forward to them as I tried playing Guitar Hero a few times and...it didn't go very well. In fact, I'm not very good at rhythm games. To borrow a bit of John Mulaney's standup, my brain is good at them: I can memorize and carry a tune just fine, but when it becomes part of a video game, then my brain has to outsource the job of not just singing the song or just recreating it however I want to, but rather has to play it in a specific way, to my not-especially-rhythmic hands.
And yet, I've played and loved, for example, Elite Beat Agents. I can now add Night in the Woods to the list of games that either are rhythm games or have rhythm games in them that I love. As has been said of all the game's other music before, the songs themselves are catchy and well done, and all it really takes is a little practice for most of them. By my third time through the game, I was playing songs in Mae's room just for the fun of it and was even singing along to them (especially my favorite, Weird Autumn), and I nailed the extra songs not played at band practice that I'd never played before on my first try.
Sound good? Well you can almost throw all of that out the window, because now we're going to talk about the only part of the game that's actually seriously hard: Pumpkin Head Guy.
You know how I said I'm not good at rhythm games? Well, it didn't take long for me to enjoy Night in the Woods so much that I resolved to 100% it. Every achievement, every conversation (or at least almost every one), take in everything I can because it's worth the time. There's one achievement that requires you to do "pretty good" at each band practice (and only at band practice; playing in Mae's room doesn't count, which makes the "hold Y to save and quit" essential). I was not looking forward to that one, given my suckiness at rhythm games, but the first couple songs were easy enough.
Then came Pumpkin Head Guy.
After watching a video to get things down, the first part of the song is still easy with some practice once you know what you're doing. Then there's the bass solo. I am jealous of those of you with rhythmic hands. My hands type accurately and quickly, but they are not good for music.
For almost a month and a half, I was stuck on this part. To be fair, I wasn't playing every day anymore thanks to problems at work kind of ruining my mood and being at such a frustrating part of the game didn't help things. In fact, I could go a week or more without playing, and even when I did it would only be a couple tries and I'd toss the controller in frustration.
With my problem-solving skills sharpened by my work experiences over the last couple of years, I tried approaching the problem from different angles. I read tips from people. Then I wrote the bass solo notes down to try to memorize them, or just look aside and read them if that helped me not panic when the song got to that part and all these notes were coming at me. Then when I kept losing my place in the song, I broke the notes into sets of eight to make memorizing them easier...and noticed they weren't just a jumble of random notes but they indeed had patterns in them, which helped a lot. Then I downloaded the video of the song and tried reproducing the notes as they played in the video to see if rote memorization helped more.
Finally, I did it. Sort of. Well, not really, but I just wanted to get on with the damn game already.
Long and the short of it is, the rhythm games surprised me with how much I enjoyed them, and once I got over how much PHG stressed me out, I was playing them for fun again. Except for that one. Well y'know what I give a grudging respect to that one.
Tips for Pumpkin Head Guy
* Here are the notes for the bass solo, or at least how I have them written, I'm pretty sure they're accurate (see the patterns?). I remapped my 3 and 4 strings to 8 and 9. An underscore (_) notes a change in tempo.
82921281
21982812
82921281
21982891
82_92182892828_21922_8121
* If you just can't do it and want the achievements, consider making a copy of your save file (the player.dat file, NOT persist.dat) at band practice and continue with the game. Make another copy of your save in Mae's room, then practice PHG in Mae's room until you feel confident. Put the band practice copy of your save back in your game and do it. That way, if you fail, you can put your Mae's room save back in and practice some more; it takes a lot less time to start playing in Mae's room than it does to get through the dialogue in band practice.
* Give up? You can always cheat and use a keyboard/macro recorder, which I admit with less shame than I expected to feel that I did. As of this review, this still works; it took me a few tries to get the timing right but it worked: https://www.reddit.com/r/NightInThe....._a_autohotkey/
Tips for Songs in General
* As I said before, to get the good journal doodles and the achievement, you "only" have to get about 90% of the notes right, or so I hear, but you do have to get the resulting "pretty good" from Gregg at band practice. If you don't, use "hold Y to save and quit" before you leave practice and your game saves.
* Whether you play the actual game with a keyboard or a controller, I strongly suggest using a keyboard for the rhythm minigames and remapping the bass strings so you can use two fingers on each hand to play them. Do what you like, but I found it easiest to play the songs with string 1 and 2 still as the 1 and 2 keys, but strings 3 and 4 remapped to the 8 and 9 keys. You might have to mess with the options menu for the notes to actually show the remapped keys, I'm not sure how exactly I got it to work but I might have had to remap the 3 and 4 keys to 8 and 9 and then also had to map a couple of other keys to them.
* I only had this problem with PHG, but if you're having a hard time with the songs, you may consider turning the game's music off while you play them so you can focus on the notes.
* Stay calm. Just that simple: Staying calm and enjoying the music will make it easier and more fun to play it.
* I overlooked this until I was in the epilogue of the game for the last time, but once a certain song that Mae regrets existing is mentioned, try playing it. It got one last big laugh out of me.
Longest Night
Not a lot to say here, it's the first thing Infinite Fall put out after NitW was successfully Kickstarted to show they were working on something. It's just a ten-odd-minute cutscene, but it's still worth playing, before or after the game, to see what kinds of things they wanted to do and some of this did indeed end up in the final game. Like the main game, it's simple, well-written, funny, insightful, and gets pretty twisted...and still has nice music, even if it's just one song.
Lost Constellation
Much like Longest Night, I don't have a lot to say about this that I haven't said at greater length about the main game. That's kind of the point: It's sort of a proto-Night in the Woods. But even this was already showing signs of what the game would be, or at least what it would be if it were a fairy tale, and I just love it. Knowing the people who made Night in the Woods could made a game just as good (if much, much shorter) while keeping the basic concept intact and all the things that would later make Night in the Woods what it is, even if it has a very different setting, really says something about them. It's also endearing to see some of the often-spoken-of bond between Mae and Granddad from when Granddad was still alive.
Once again, and for maybe the last time, the music is great, in fact there were times when I just stood in one place to listen to the music and admire the scenery. Doubly in fact, I said that Night in the Woods has some nice scenery, especially in nature. This whole game takes place in nature. I think you get where I'm going with this.
The only "tip" I can give from the one point I got a little stuck is to, when you reach a point where you can't go on alone, keep an eye on the trees.
