A lot of what this game has to say is done before, and it's execution may be pretty shallow in practice, and the gameplay may be nonexistent outside of like a handful of core moments, with the only other ones being in hangouts that let you pick between kinda sad story and TV static story but you get to play minigames (why not let you do both??)
Maybe it does do a shit job at illustrating that the town is a bit shitty with their strongest examples being "a cool restaurant shut down" and "theres birds in an abandoned spot" and "people dont like it when you climb on things but you do it anyways"
Maybe the strong visual identity of the game has minimal value other than looking kind of cool, with the dream segments meaning absolutely nothing but being kinda cool.
Maybe the world-building for the town is a bunch of vapid bullshit that was made up on the spot, and there's little thought into what goes on past what's directly shown to you.
Maybe Mae is a generic failure dropout protagonist and her strongest characteristics include being a bit eccentric and clingy to her childhood.
Maybe the 2 major side characters are cardboard cutouts that have their entire characters summed up in a description of their personality with "The disowned gay guy who hates the system but is really fun" and "The girl who is poor and sad"
Maybe the ending is terrible and uproots the interesting things the game was about to tell with some shitty supernatural garbage.
But I like this game, I like the things it tries to tell even if it's pretty shallow and doesn't say anything major, It resonates with me a lot, especially now just due to personal connections and me being a sucker for the art-style and music the game has, I was happier to have thought of all that could be going on in the town and the characters lives and how they'll turn out, than how disappointed I was when nothing gets explained and nobody gets developed.
I'm never going to play this game again though, because I would probably actually start to hate it, I played it so long ago, back in early 2018.
With the indie scene getting larger and larger, and hopefully with more people being interested in playing stuff that isn't dangled in front of them (seriously, either dig through obscure indies on steam, or even check out stuff on Itch!) I don't recommend this game, you'll probably find a thousand games that hit the notes that this game does but better, just lacking the elaborate production value to make a whole "thing" like NITW is, not that it really matters in the end.
Maybe it does do a shit job at illustrating that the town is a bit shitty with their strongest examples being "a cool restaurant shut down" and "theres birds in an abandoned spot" and "people dont like it when you climb on things but you do it anyways"
Maybe the strong visual identity of the game has minimal value other than looking kind of cool, with the dream segments meaning absolutely nothing but being kinda cool.
Maybe the world-building for the town is a bunch of vapid bullshit that was made up on the spot, and there's little thought into what goes on past what's directly shown to you.
Maybe Mae is a generic failure dropout protagonist and her strongest characteristics include being a bit eccentric and clingy to her childhood.
Maybe the 2 major side characters are cardboard cutouts that have their entire characters summed up in a description of their personality with "The disowned gay guy who hates the system but is really fun" and "The girl who is poor and sad"
Maybe the ending is terrible and uproots the interesting things the game was about to tell with some shitty supernatural garbage.
But I like this game, I like the things it tries to tell even if it's pretty shallow and doesn't say anything major, It resonates with me a lot, especially now just due to personal connections and me being a sucker for the art-style and music the game has, I was happier to have thought of all that could be going on in the town and the characters lives and how they'll turn out, than how disappointed I was when nothing gets explained and nobody gets developed.
I'm never going to play this game again though, because I would probably actually start to hate it, I played it so long ago, back in early 2018.
With the indie scene getting larger and larger, and hopefully with more people being interested in playing stuff that isn't dangled in front of them (seriously, either dig through obscure indies on steam, or even check out stuff on Itch!) I don't recommend this game, you'll probably find a thousand games that hit the notes that this game does but better, just lacking the elaborate production value to make a whole "thing" like NITW is, not that it really matters in the end.