Night in the Woods. How to start playing? The best video games

Want a game about cool kids from a province? Driving pick-ups with friends, growing up in a drowsy town hiding a secret – that sort of thing? Well, Night in the Woods isn't really like that. But it definitely has secrets and friendship.

In Night in the Woods, you play as Mae, a feisty cat who returns to her hometown after being kicked out of college. You're trying to reconnect with a pack of friends: a fatalistic crocodile Bea, a hyperactive Fox Greg, and an introvert bear Angus. The pack of friends explore the city together, build relationships, and try to solve the mystery of Mae's friend's disappearance from years ago. In the background, we watch small-town life, unemployment and supernatural events.

The game offers intuitive controls, simple minigames, and an interesting system of building relationships, which every morning has the player chose the friend they'll spend the day with. This provides unique scenes that let you get to know Bea, Greg and Angus better.

The game proves intensely melancholic and uncompromising in showing the slow, economic decline of small American towns in the Rust Belt and that is, in my opinion, its greatest advantage – the narrative is very subtle and at the same time down-to-earth.