Night in the Woods is a game by all rights I should have liked, I wanted to like, even. 2 Months ago when I was utterly fixated on Pentiment I watched every interview and talk Josh Sawyer has ever given, kind of obsessively. It was from these talks that I got the recommendation to play Night In The Woods, cited as the main game inspiration for Pentiment, as well as Mutazione and Oxenfree. After Playing the game I can definitely see what he was talking about, the minigames, dialogue structure and format of the setting, even the subjects broached are all pretty similar.

And yet I find myself wondering why does Pentiment work for me so well and NITW really doesnt? The protagonist, Mae Borowski is in theory the most relatable character in fiction to my life circumstances in pretty much every way except for our gender. I also had a complete breakdown when I moved out and utterly crashed spectacularly at uni and came back to try and go back to the stability of home. I also struggle with becoming a "proper adult" and finding meaning in existential questions. I also dread seeing a lot of people here back home cause of embarassing shit I did and feel kind of stuck at times. I also wonder if Im holding back my friends who seem to be making something of their lives unlike me. I am also Bi. I am an atheist, and yet somehow with all of this said and done I found myself relating to Andreas Maler, a deeply religious german renaissance painter 100 times more than Mae.

That's not to say that relatability is the be all and end all of storytelling, but I felt as if in the case of NITW I was SUPPOSED to be relating to her somewhat. Shes just really kind of unlikeable for most of the runtime and of course being a videogame you have to actively aid her in being shitty and doing shitty things at times. I was ready to abandon this game at the 2 hour mark although apparently that wasnt enough of a fair shake so I kept pushing through hoping maybe something would happen beyond the standard coming of age stuff and angst. I can say now that I finished it that something did eventually sort of occur.

Im not slapping this game with a 0.5 cause even though I disliked it, and it takes way, way, WAY too long for it, some good moments eventually do happen in the second/third act. Like 4 hours in this game actually starts (I could have watched Lawrence of Arabia in that time) and we get some kind of intrigue. Some character moments get some actual fucking payoff and one or two lines finally managed to get a light chuckle out of me. I like the gay bear dude, and I also like Angus. And look, I like Wayward Strand, which is a game in which bugger all happens, but that game was full of sympathetic (and unsympathetic too) and interesting characters with lovely dialogue. Being narrative focused with little mechanics focus is FINE, but you are riding on that narrative to hold up everything else and man this dialogue. I really dislike this dialogue, nobody talks like real people; which is fair enough I suppose given they are anthropomorphic animals but this Webcomic from the 2010s type dialogue just poisoned everything else especially for the first couple of hours.

There is some light platforming but its kind of a waste of space. Especially the dream sequences that scream filler to me. At the end of it all, all the existential stuff is the payoff for the game but Ive honestly seen it all before tackled better elsewhere (well, in Pentiment for one thing but I guess thats cheating given the timeline). Nothing is really tackled with much depth and it just makes me scratch my head when I see reviews being like "this is the first time I had played a videogame that explored these subjects" and like theres no way to say this without sounding like an asshole but what? You need to play more videogames then. I love EEAAO but if this is how that movie looks to people who dislike it then I'm sorry for recommending it to people. I think I'm just done with media about positive Nihilism (and yeah I get it, the Null Symbol, you are very clever Mr/Mrs writer), its unfair to rag on NITW for this reason, cause its from 6 years ago now but I have to be honest with how I feel. The art style and sound design/soundtrack are good though.

If you've gotten this far into this horribly written, mess of a review I ask you consider the fact that my life is a mess, which is coincidentally why its weird that I didnt like this game.

Gameplay: Persona 1
Characters: Persona 2
Soundtrack: Persona 3
Story: Persona 4
Aesthetics: Persona 5

Night in the Woods perfectly encapsulates how it feels to live as a socially awkward neurodivergent person in the rural-ish northeast US. The northeast, especially New England, has this air of minding their own business; sure there's pockets here 'n' there with some more outgoing personality; Jersey and the eastern portion of Mass come to mind, but other states have jokes within New England such as Vermont, the joke goes "In Vermont, they speak two languages; English, and silence." Despite that however, there's immense difficulty getting around and doing things if you have social anxiety like I do. Mae's seemingly incoherent or childish responses to different social interactions seem to mostly stem from anxiety, trauma and a yearning for a time since passed.

I played this a year before moving down the coast to the Mid-Atlantic, and the difference in culture within a country people lump together as "Murican" is pretty staggering. It feels like everyone has someplace to be, the food is similar in a homely sort of way but largely completely different dishes; most people don't know what a good chowder looks like, and chili is relatively uncommon, and hardly ever hear about anyone making stews; things that are staples of New England diet for being easy to make, cheap, hearty, and most importantly warm during the Autumn and Winter seasons. Speaking of seasons, Night in the Woods is largely associated with Autumn, and for good reason, it nails the feeling of it better than any other game I'm aware of; at multiple times during both playthroughs I found myself vividly able to imagine the feeling in the air, or the smells.

The general art direction, sound design, overall presentation is fantastic, I yearn for more games with bold, simplistic 2D art that somehow convey texture in such a masterful way through use of its soundscape in conjunction with the wonderful color design.

During my first playthrough, I found myself crying a little at a couple points in following Bea around and hanging out with her. There's a lot of subtle conversational interactions too that really struck home, both in the forced delays between some messages so you cannot just mash through them, emphasizing the time and pace of a conversation (extremely underrated in video game writing in general, any game confident in its writing should be confident enough to tell the player to read, especially when that's the main focus anyways.) and in the exact grammar used. It's not without the occasional typo or grammatical error but I find those easy to look past. I found Mae and co's pleas easy to empathize with, seeing bits and pieces of that in the people I love. I clearly remember saying about 2/3 or so through this playthrough, "Thank god I don't relate to Mae. She needs a hug."

I would come to eat those words on my second playthrough in 2020, without getting into it 2020 was a very low point for me. As I waded through the game a second time, this time following Greg, it kept hitting me; "Oh no.", I said, rather shakily. "Oh God." I said, tearing up. I saw much of myself and my life in Mae, in about the same time frame it took her as well. It hurt, it hurt a lot, and it broke me. That weekend I'd also decided to spend all of it offline except for contacting my ex to talk for a little bit before bed. I used the time to immerse myself fully in the pain I felt playing through it, watching my life and anxieties play back like a slow motion train wreck. Yet throughout all of it, the fact I saw that in there was comforting to me, a reminder that I exist and should keep existing. I didn't really cry much during this playthrough, except near the beginning when the realizations dawned on me; but when the credits rolled I spent a good half hour or so straight gently sobbing by myself.

The game makes its point the clearest imo when you hang out with Bea, because if "Proximity" means anything to you, you already know why. Despite the rather abrupt second-to-last chapter, the sheer impact of Night in the Woods changed my life, twice, for completely different reasons. I'm scared, but that's not such a bad thing.

At the end of everything, hold onto anything.

Awfully boring, Horrendous, hurtful. 9 hours of this crap. Honestly, I just didn't drop so I could talk with a high level of certainty.

Gameplay? Reading a bunch of texts with small talks and holding your analog to the left. This should've been a visual novel, I swear. It's a goddamn walking simulator

Story? Dude, a cat with 20y that dropped college and represents depression and anxiety in a dumb way It's not a great plot. "oh there is a cult", OMG, BEST STORY EVER.

Characters? Mae? annoying, dumb, stupid. Bea, the most reasonable one, the one I don't feel like dying when reading the dialogs. The rest? meh

If you're one of the people who write "oh, this cat is literally me"... Man, Your life is sad and nobody likes you. Life is not this game, you won't have friends who will save you from a cult acting like this. STFU and go do something meaninful with your life

I'm sorry, I don't usually trash talk games THAT much, but this one...

The game was pretty good, often laugh-out-loud funny. "Die Anywhere Else" has been stuck in my head for months. The game's a bit longer than it needed to be, but I can see how people might like just getting lost in the dying small town aesthetic. I liked it!

But what it REALLY got me thinking about was this trend with indie games. Why is it such a widespread thing to have an indie game start out looking all cutesy and fun and then get creepy/disturbing at the end? It happens all the time! I have a whole list of them, but obviously listing those kinds of games here would be spoilery for all of them.

I have to assume there's some Venn Diagram where the small circle of successful indie devs widely overlaps with a much larger circle of people who loved Hot Topic and that Happy Tree Friends-esque combination of cutesy with edgy. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just trying to understand the trend.

I usually can't deal with these more narrative, story-driven games that are very low on gameplay and very high on slowly walking back-and-forth in a straight line and just talking to people, but I was pleasantly surprised by Night in the Woods. It still does have a lot of that and falls into a lot of the same trappings as a lot of similar games that have lost my attention, but I feel it also does more to mix things up and keep things interesting.

The characters (with the only real exception being the protagonist) are all interesting and likeable and make you really wanna hang out with them, and the less fleshed-out NPCs are often at least funny or charming in a way, or expand on the world around you in a way that makes you want to talk to them and see everything. I was surprised at how much genuine lore and background there was to the location of Possum Springs, and how in-depth you can go in its history and politics by engaging with the optional content.

The game looks gorgeous, with so many vibrant and colourful locations and a ton of varied setpiece moments it'll show you before it's over, and it's often throwing silly but novel little minigames at you to keep you on your toes, almost always well-explained - or at least immediately obvious enough to you that you should never hit a roadblock or find your progress halted. It also has an impressive soundtrack for such a comparatively small game, able to evoke nostalgia and comfort in the same way an Animal Crossing game would, and still be super foreboding and ominous when it needs to be.

I could have done without the dream sequences, none of which are gonna make any sense until you get to the end of the game - by which point you've probably forgotten all of them and which are absolutely the embodiment of the good ol' "walk around the place slowly in a straight line" problem, and I found the handling of some of the game's themes (in particular, mental health) to be pretty botched in contrast to how well it deals with nostalgia and growing up, or...Not growing up. At the very least, whilst I don't feel it gets across Mae's whole mental health issues very well, nor does it justify her more questionable actions particularly well, I at least don't feel it was offensive at all.

Night in the Woods crumbles under its own weight a bit. Its ending is pretty shaky and some of its messaging is obtuse, but I found its charm, uniqueness and the genuine intrigue its main story presents before it falls flat helped me get through it pretty easily, and I really don't regret playing it at all, even as someone who usually can't stand the kind of game it is.

My favourite character was Gregg :)

If you've ever been a depressed and aimless 20 year old overwhelmed by a life that isn't what you expected or wanted, you can probably relate to Mae Borowski.

I have a fondness for the idea of games that are more like places where you can hang out (I think it’s Animal Crossing’s best idea), and this game feels that way. The town of Possum Springs feels genuinely inhabited, and Mae's relationships to her friends feel as real, loving, difficult and damaged as real friendships are. The writing deftly handles the way that relationships drift and decay and can never return to what they were, but importantly, they retain the potential to blossom in different and possibly better ways. People can’t stay the same forever, so it’s nearly impossible for their relationships to.

One thing I love about this game is how gently and unexpectedly it approaches difficult subjects. It's a game about decay and loss, but it's just as much a game about hope and community. Ultimately it's about the necessity of hope and community in the face of despair, anxiety, fear, and a world that often seems terminally ill. It's also one of the only games I know of that's overtly about the damage caused by capitalism, the way it makes everything homogenous as it crushes individuals under its heel. The nihilism of capitalism has infected the town, as it infects everywhere, and the environment it creates affects everyone in one way or another.

But, also, the strengths of Night in the Woods don't stop at the narrative. Just in terms of play, this game is really fun! So many things are satisfyingly interactive. Leaves blow in your path as you frolic in autumnal delight. Telephone wires bow and twang in an incredibly pleasing manner as you balance upon them in the fresh morning air. You can jump up and down on your neighbor's car for no reason, and you’ll want to, because everything in this game feels so good. There are fun little minigames about moving furniture or smashing light bulbs or looking at stars with a cool old dude or hanging out with your mom. I’d also be remiss not to mention it’s the funniest game I’ve played other than Butterfly Soup. Night in the Woods proves that a charming and generous sense of play is no less engaging than dense mechanics.

This is a game I fully expect to return to occasionally for the rest of my life.

This is a hard game, but not in, like, difficulty or anything. It's hard because it hits really close to home in a lot of ways, especially if you're from a small, economically depressed rust belt town not unlike Possum Springs. This game captures the zeitgeist in a way that I can't really say I've seen elsewhere, and it does so admirably, but in a way that made me cry a lot, so. You know. I'm predisposed to really love this game based on that alone.

In a hypothetical scenario where it didn't speak to me as much as it very definitely does, there's still plenty to recommend the game. It doesn't pull its punches at all, but it's also funny as heck and the mystery is pretty fun to unravel, too. The main cast is great, but you'll also probably find yourself checking in with all the people around town after every plot event just to see what they're all up to.

In terms of more video game-y things, the art style is extremely charming and the music is great. I've gotta admit that I was really happy to get this for the Switch and play it, because I really didn't like trying to do the platforming with my keyboard... that's more of a me problem, though. It's genuinely pretty fun trying to platform around town and walk on telephone lines.

Anyway, this is a definite recommend for me. You probably should be in the right headspace for it, of course, but it's a great experience. It is kind of hopeful at the end, in its own way, and I feel like it's the kind of game that works especially well in these trying times.

Night in the Woods is not a great adventure game. It is however, a fantastic piece of art that brings its story too close to my home for comfort, and has given me an experience that I can't in good faith criticize to that great an extent, despite how heavily flawed it is.

It's defined by its aesthetic generally, the cozy but melancholic autumn colors that bleed through the characters and storyline, circling around nostalgic wants of a past that has left or decayed long ago. Each of the characters presented struggle with their own way of finding a future for themselves, or even their identity. Bea tries to find a place to belong as well as deal with her own struggles, and Gregg and Angus ponder in their own way about where their future should go. It's unfortunately not paced as well as it could (the fact that it's awfully presented that you can only complete one of the character stories at a time is shitty), but each of them are told with such powerfully lifelike dialogue and very natural prose.

The story allows the characters and the town to grow and be further fleshed out as you walk up as Mae, the titular disgruntled and tortured MC. It fumbles over itself in the last act, and honestly leaves this game with a super unsatisfying end, but retroactively I can somehow tolerate that. Because, even despite the story fucking up and failing to capitalize on Mae's arc, it left me with enough heartwrenching stories to ponder over and feel strongly attached to each of the characters here.

I should also mention that NitW also offers a super good retro game to play as well in-universe, with Demontower. It's actually a rather competent 2d action game, with some good enemy and boss design. It came as a big surprise to me that even if you're bored of the gameplay, you have something legitimately fun to play rather than just to read.

Overall, despite its incredibly flawed structure and end, I can't recommend Night in the Woods enough if my description of what the game is about even slightly piques your interest. It's an incredible journey that encapsulates the mental struggle of growing up, depression, and dealing with changing times during economic crisis.

This game came as a complete system shock. About an hour from here is a town with a name that's a barely disguised synonym for "Possum Springs", and I may or may not have lived in the real life analogs for both "Hunwick" and "Bright Harbor". So, you can imagine my surprise when starting this up and seeing so many deeply familiar things appear on screen. Here we go, Smelters, am I right?

Night in the Woods completely nails the sense of ennui I feel only more strongly with every subsequent visit to my hometown since moving out: things are recognizable on the surface, but underneath have been weathered by the passage of time. Favorite hangout spots and local businesses replaced by big corporate brands, institutions once newly built now fallen into disrepair, the childhood homes of friends under new ownership as everyone has gradually moved away to start their own families - and a feeling of "stuckness" in everyone who still remains. You can really sense that this game was written by someone who lived this, by someone who feels this ennui in the very stardust that makes up their atoms.

Based on that alone, I was destined to connect with this game. The fact that it's also heavily inspired by Twin Peaks and features a boldly unique art direction paired with a bangin' soundtrack slots Night in the Woods comfortably into the realm of "totally my shit". Beyond that though, everything about this game lives up to its hype as an indie darling and I simply cannot recommend it enough - especially if you've ever felt the crushing weight of living in a former labor union town well past its prime.

gregg rulz ok

why do i have to be rude to my friends

===================
year and a half later edit (not really a proper review just organizing some thoughts i have about nitw and a similar game):
been thinking about this one a lot recently. not because i've really changed my opinion or love it now, but because it feels like such wasted potential. forgive me if this one is hard to read, my thoughts about this game are very tangled and laying them out in a way that makes sense is difficult

one of my favorite games of all time, echo (a free vn basically no one has played but i digress), has nearly all the same building blocks as night in the woods. you've got:
-vaguely a coming of age story
-about coming back to your rural dead-end hometown from college
-reuniting with your old friend group, hanging out & talking with them
-you get to choose who to hang out with & get different content based on who you pick
-a member of the friend group is gone, you progressively figure out what happened to them and why
-pretty gay and pretty "indie furry", in a way that deters a lot of the people not in the target demographic from ever trying it.

i could go on but i won't because that would land itself in spoiler territory for one or both, but if you've played both they should reveal themselves to be very similar in premise. there's enough differences to matter but my point is that they're 2 games that are so easy to compare to one another that one could do it with nothing but the first sentence of each game's product descriptions. so why do i love echo as much as i do, and not really care for nitw as much as i do? for me, the answer lies entirely within execution.

thought 1: i feel like the biggest sticking point for me is how nitw handles emotion, that being, it barely does. which for a game all about talking to people is pretty bad! often the most you'll get is a character narrowing or opening their eyes a bit more and dryly delivering an "oh my god" or a "no fucking way", but the character sprites barely emote, and there's no descriptive text that lets you fill in the details. echo at least has your standard neutral/happy/angry/etc visual novely sprites for each character, but where that game shines is in its text descriptions. the combination of these two does wonders for the believability of that game's world and its characters--it's really no wonder why so many games about talking to people opt for a visual novel format. contrast that to nitw, where every character talks like they're texting one another. people don't talk like this, they type like this, which is a very important distinction to be made, and i couldn't help but be pulled out of the experience any time i noticed it.

thought 2: night in the woods often emphasizes the fact that possum springs is a dead end town no one really wants to live in, but aside from the text there's really nothing backing it up. for a town as "shitty" as everyone thinks it is, it looks way too pleasant to exist within. night in the woods is simply too pretty for what it's going for. if you want to say that the game is actually about how this small town isn't actually that bad, might i point you to some plot beats that happen in the story that directly contradict that? contrast that to echo, which isnt nearly as wishy-washy about how it wants to present the town; it's oppressively hot, most of the houses are vacant or abandoned, everything is barren or messy or grimy or all of the above, the game goes the whole nine yards. the refuge from this is in the friendships the mc has formed, and when things go badly you can't just escape to "oh look at how pretty the game is", it's all laid bare in a way you can't ignore. night in the woods clearly wants to tug on your emotional strings, but it's missing any sort of bite, which leads me pretty cleanly to my next point...

thought 3: to me, night in the woods feels conflicted in what it wants to be. nitw is a cozy game where you hang out with your friends but it's also a game that delves into the troubles that can befall a freindship, particularly in bea's events (i will mention that i only played one or two of greggs when i played the game so i can't really comment on them). this is all good and fine, but the issue is that the game is too scared to let go of the "cozy" descriptor, so things happen that should have an effect on the dynamics of the friend group, but end up changing basically nothing. i'm not sure how much of a spoiler this is, but regardless of whether you choose to hang out with bea or gregg, the narrative converges towards the same point in the end as a plot starts to take center focus. this unintentionally kind of says that it doesn't really matter what you say to the people around you and if you never hang out with them, that they'll still be your friends, which feels... wrong? like that can't be what they're going for, right? mae is allowed to be at best a total klutz and at worst actively malicious towards the people around her and no one really minds all that much in the long run.

it all comes down to narrative goals; night in the woods tells the player "it's ok to be confused about life in your early 20s" but there's so many extraneous elements that this idea is often shoved to the wayside. once the plot gets going it's basically completely gone as a theme. contrast this with echo, which, to be vague as to not thematically spoil it, has an undercurrent of "trauma" that the game carries across large thematic and tonal shifts. almost nothing in echo feels like a convenient accident despite how wildly different some of the routes can be from one another, whereas night in the woods, to me, feels like a collage of a bunch of different ideas thrown together with little thought put into their cohesion.

for most people these issues are ignorable, for me they're not. had a hard time putting my finger on why exactly this game failed to resonate with me at all, but after i saw a game going for something kinda similar do it with flying colors, it's led me to thinking about it again. only real reason i wrote this is that i mostly just wanted to get my thoughts down about this game now that ive got a good grasp on them lol

Sights & Sounds
- The art direction of this game is excellent; I love how the bold color palette allows the simplified geometry present in the character designs and environments to really pop. Despite the consistency, I never got bored of looking at the game in spite of multiple playthroughs
- I loved the music as well. The diversity in Night in the Woods's soundscape lends quite a helping hand to the complex and sometimes difficult themes the game addresses. You can hear a variety of musical influences mostly geared towards indie, alternative, and classic rock. Some favorites in particular included the Monster Magnet-esque stoner jam "Space Dragon" and the seemingly Motörhead-inspired "Pumpkin Head Guy"
- Having played bass for several years, I particularly enjoyed the emphasis on the sonic lower end. It's more than just roots and fifths!

Story & Vibes
- You play as Mae, a cat who's just returned home after dropping out of college for reasons she doesn't want to explain. Night in the Woods follows her story over the course of the following autumn season
- Thankfully, she's joined by her friends Gregg, Bea, and Angus (and a host of other wonderful side characters) to aid her with the struggles she faces in returning home
- I'm being intentionally vague with the story because it's such a great experience. If you've managed to avoid spoilers, please do yourself the favor of going in blind. Pretty much every aspect of the narrative was high quality, from the unpredictable wild ride of a plot to the masterful treatment of sensitive themes. There's so much more to depression that merely feeling sad, and Night in the Woods depicts those nuances poignantly and brutally
- It's not all negative energy, fortunately. Night in the Woods has a great sense of humor ("It's called body positivity, Bea, read the internet"). For every soul-crushing moment the game hits you with, there's at least 10 good laughs to follow to help lighten the mood
- I feel like I can't say enough about the characters in this game and how worth it talking to everyone is. Talk to everyone every chance you get, and explore to make sure you talk with everyone. Some of the best scenes in the game can only be experienced by investing time with more than just your core friend group

Playability & Replayability
- The central gameplay loop (with some day-to-day variation) in Night in the Woods goes something like: 1) Have a weird dream, 2) Wake up and talk to your mom, 3) Explore Possum Springs and talk to everyone you see, 4) Go to band practice and play a rhythm game, 5) Hang out with either Gregg or Bea, 6) Go home, talk to your dad, and go to bed
- Note how #5 says Bea OR Gregg. Hanging out with one of them will prevent you from hanging out with the other for that evening, so you'll need two playthroughs to see all the scenes. Don't worry, though, either choice is really good, but I'd maybe recommend hanging out with Gregg when you're given the option the first time if you plan to someday 100% the game
- I love the platforming elements here, especially the Mario-like triple jump. It's worth exploring Possum Springs' rooftops and power lines once access to them opens up. You'll miss out on a wealth of good content if you don't
- The rhythm game is a standout, but note that it can get really hard (particularly on the song Pumpkin Head Guy) if you're trying to play with a controller. I didn't feel like installing the game on my computer or connecting my keyboard to my Steam Deck, so I just mapped the face buttons to the shoulder buttons and let my Frequency/Amplitude muscle memory guide me
- There's lots of other little mini games (some of them recurring). I liked the variety and dose of silliness these injected into my playthroughs
- Normally, I wouldn't really consider 100%ing a story game that requires multiple playthroughs. Luckily, all of the side content is optional, so you can just power through the main story and see the Gregg/Bea scenes you missed in the first one. In all, getting all the achievements requires two full playthroughs and two partial playthroughs

Overall Impressions & Performance
- I first played through this title in 2017 not long after it released, and I always knew I'd want to return to it again. The writing was so good and the characters so memorable that I knew I'd wind up fully completing it someday
- If you've ever struggled with issues of confidence or identity or faced an uphill battle against anxiety or depression, Night in the Woods will likely resonate with you. Even though I can't relate entirely to Mae (I'm not a homebound, self-destructive, bisexual, college-dropout. Or a cat), the game managed to strike a chord. Several, really. I recognize my bias will show in my rating, but I connected to the story in a way I didn't expect
- Aside from the rhythm game being sometimes difficult on one or two songs when using a controller, the game is a great Steam Deck title

Final Verdict
- 10/10. If you only ever play one game about animals dealing with personal problems, be sure it's Night in the Woods

--- Short form review as I abandoned the game ---

Playtime: 3h
Status: Abandoned (50% game complete)

I can definitely see why people would be drawn to this game but I think its a hit or a miss game. The game is very much a follow Mae as she does random things, and if they remind you of your nostalgic experiences, you will like it. If not then you wont. I abandoned the game half way because I could see where it was going but I wasn't interested in finishing it. I can't say I was bored, i found it amusing but, I was also not interested beyond a certain point. The really breaking point for me was the dream sequences and the clunky platforming. i couldn't put up with that!

Pros:
like the art style and writing
Hanging out with Mae's friends reminded me of my younger carefree days.... ahhhh. But it was still hard to relate to what Mae and her friends were doing
I liked her loving parents

Cons:
Dumb platforming that really did me in.
not so fun mini games - like guitar hero, and others.
The story takes forever to hook you. But i can understand why, its a follow someone around their day style story.
Apparently the hook kicks in just after i abandoned the game. Lookin up the hook and ending I wasn't intersted
lots of reading!! even if its fun writing ... i don't like reading in games so much.