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Homo Ludens (Polish Game Research Society)
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Create free accountArticleHomo Ludens (Polish Game Research Society)
The authors argue that Night in the Woods achieves ludonarrative coherence, where story, game world and mechanics align. Restrictive design mirrors the protagonist's entrapment.
Core argument. The authors argue the game successfully aligns its narrative with its gameplay.
This article examines ludonarrative coherence, the integration of story, game world, and mechanics, and its musical counterpart, which the authors term ludomusical harmony, using the indie game Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall, 2017) as its case study. The authors argue that the game successfully aligns its narrative with its gameplay, arguing that its restrictive mechanics, including limited player agency, a constrained town space, low difficulty, and recurring experiences of failure, reinforce the story of a young woman trapped by mental illness and economic decline in a Rust Belt town. The study is grounded in roughly twenty-six hours of play on a Windows PC with an Xbox One controller, supplemented by walkthrough videos, and it treats the game as a collaborative artistic product rather than the work of a single author, despite the controversy surrounding one of its developers.
The analysis identifies several specific design strategies. Restricted movement and an autosave system that forbids reversing decisions mirror the protagonist's sense of entrapment, while the game's emphasis on affective rather than strictly narrative choices foregrounds emotional immersion. On the musical side, the authors examine three minigames: the recurring dream sequences featuring four ghostly musicians, which balance player interaction with the time-based closure that music requires; a stair-climbing mechanic mapped onto the chromatic scale; and a bass guitar practice game that uses rhythm rather than melody and repeatedly yields negative feedback, symbolically reinforcing the protagonist's sense of failure. The authors conclude that music in the game functions both as part of the storyworld and as a tool for shaping the player's emotional response, and that the ludomusical harmony is sustained throughout the title.
DiGRA · 2023
