(light quirky music) - [Dan] "Night in the Woods" is a small, independent video game.

The story focuses on a cat, and her name is Mae.

And it's about her returning to her small hometown after she drops out of college.

- I was co-director of the game.

I co-wrote the story with Bethany, and I did the art and animation.

- [Bethany] My husband's an animator, and Adam Holowka, who had made games before, liked his art style and was like, "Hey, we should do something."

And then it just ended up with, "Hey, you should help write for this."

- [Scott] Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania's all over the game.

The place, the politics, the people, all these other little signifiers of the region, to the point where people can pick it out if they're from the area.

They can go, "Oh, that just feels like South Side Slopes," or, "Oh, this feels like Altoona."

- [Bethany] The South Side was a huge west for us 'cause we lived there when we first came here for, like, five years.

Looking up and seeing all the details on the top of the buildings, we took a lot from that.

- It was a really personal game, so setting it in places that we knew really well and had an attachment to and a connection with, for us, felt kind of honest and exciting.

- [Bethany] With people's tiny little backyards, the Catholic imagery, that's all stuff that we've just walked around and seen so many times.

It just seemed really natural to base it here, 'cause this is what we know.

I think it would be a very different game if we didn't live in Pittsburgh.

- [Scott] The most recognizable Pittsburgh thing would be Underhill in the game.

Where you kinda run up in this hill, just the stairs in the background and houses built on this 45-degree angle.

That's very South Side Slopes.

- We made sure to put pierogis in there.

We had to represent the pierogis.

(soft music) - [Dan] This is the Commonwealth Press Warehouse.

We're a design space and print shop.

At the time, they were always working out of their house and that can drive you a little stir crazy.

So they had asked if they could come in here and work and I was like, "Of course, man, anytime you want to, you're more than welcome."

- [Scott] We worked together like on our merchandise, our shirts, and hats, and all that stuff.

So we're here all the time.

So it's like a little home away from home.

We weren't expecting the game to go over as well as it did.

- We did the Kickstarter first and like the response to that was amazing.

And that was just this tiny little trailer.

Especially considering it was our first game and we were like, "We don't know what we're doing."

- There's the independent game (indistinct) which is kinda like the most prestigious you can get in the very niche world of independent games.

We won the Excellence in Narrative Award.

And we won the grand prize, which is kind of like Best Picture.

And the game connects with people because we just kinda try to be honest.

There's a lot of games that are about mental health issues or about various regions and stuff, but a lot of time it doesn't always get talked about in video games in a straight forward manner.

It connects with us just because it's us talking about ourselves, and people we've known, and people we've been.

But we didn't wanna make a game explaining to other people about ourselves, we were kind of just trying to make our own mythologies and our own stories about the people and the places that we knew.

- It's difficult to explain how significant they have been with the amount of work they've brought through here.

Both Scott and Bethany are the people that you want to succeed.

Together we just kinda tried to grow as much as we could.

And now that they're killing it, it's so cool that they're choosing to stay with us so that we can continue to grow together.

- [Bethany] We knew we weren't gonna be some huge, giant game, but people seem to be into it.

And it was like, "Oh this is cool."

(laughing) (cat groaning) (soft quirky music)