Video games usually feel like they were made by a monolithic entity, a giant corporation with a shiny logo and a PR department. But Night in the Woods was different. It felt like it was plucked directly out of someone’s diary—messy, anxious, and deeply human. That’s because the night in the woods dev team, Infinite Fall, wasn’t a corporate machine; it was a small, fragile collective of creators who poured their specific Midwestern anxieties into a game about a cat who drops out of college.
It’s been years since Possum Springs first invited us in. Yet, people still talk about the developers constantly. Why? Because the story of how the game was made—and the tragedy that followed—is just as heavy as the game’s themes of economic collapse and mental health struggles. Honestly, if you want to understand indie games in the 2010s, you have to look at Alec Holowka, Scott Benson, and Bethany Hockenberry. They built something beautiful, but the cost was astronomical.
The Weird Alchemy of Infinite Fall
When the Kickstarter launched in 2013, nobody expected it to explode. They asked for $50,000. They got over $200,000. People were hungry for something that felt real. Scott Benson was an animator with a distinct, sharp style; Bethany Hockenberry brought the grounded, rural Pennsylvania vibes; and Alec Holowka was the veteran coder and composer who had already won an IGF Grand Prize for Aquaria.
They called themselves Infinite Fall. It wasn't a real studio with an office and a water cooler. It was a collaboration across distances.
Working as a night in the woods dev meant balancing Scott’s world-building with Alec’s technical and musical genius. Alec's music is the heartbeat of the game. If you’ve ever sat on the power lines as Mae Borowski and felt that specific "end of autumn" melancholy, that was Alec. But behind the scenes, things were strained. Scott has been very open about the fact that the development was grueling. They were dealing with massive expectations, their own mental health hurdles, and a project that kept growing in scope. It wasn't just "coding a game." It was three people trying to capture the feeling of a dying town while living through their own personal pressures.
What Actually Happened Between the Creators?
You can't talk about the developers without addressing the 2019 fracture. This is where the "human-quality" part of the story gets difficult. In August 2019, several women in the industry, including Zoe Quinn, came forward with allegations of abuse and manipulative behavior against Alec Holowka.
The fallout was instant.
Scott Benson and Bethany Hockenberry found themselves in a nightmare. They had to reconcile the person they worked with for years with the allegations being made public. Within days, they cut ties with Alec. They cancelled an unannounced project and postponed the physical release of Night in the Woods. Scott posted on Twitter (now X) at the time, explaining that they took the allegations seriously and that the culture of the team had to reflect the values of the game itself.
Then, the unthinkable happened. Alec Holowka passed away shortly after.
It left the legacy of the game in a strange, painful limbo. How do you love a piece of art when one of its primary architects had such a complicated and troubled ending? Fans were torn. Some felt the remaining night in the woods dev members acted too fast; others felt they did the only thing they could to protect the community and themselves. It’s a messy, unresolved chapter in gaming history that mirrors the game's own themes: there are no easy answers, and sometimes things just break.
The Design Philosophy That Changed Indie Games
Putting the drama aside for a second—if that's even possible—the technical side of the night in the woods dev process was fascinating. They didn't use a standard dialogue system. Scott Benson actually wrote a custom tool called Yarn.
Think about that.
Most devs would just grab a plugin. But Scott needed the dialogue to feel like actual speech, with specific rhythms and pauses. Yarn allowed them to script conversations that felt alive. It’s why Mae sounds like a real person and not a quest-giver. The game uses a 2D physics engine in Unity that makes Mae feel "weighty" yet bouncy. It’s "platforming" but not really. It’s more about the feel of walking through a neighborhood where you don't belong anymore.
The art style also broke rules. It’s all vectors. Very clean. No outlines. This was Scott's signature. It made the game look like a high-end children's book, which created a jarring, brilliant contrast with the themes of kidnapping, cults, and capitalism's slow death. The developers weren't just making a "walking sim." They were trying to invent a new way to tell a story where the "game" part was just an excuse to exist in a space.
Why We Are Still Talking About It in 2026
The impact of the night in the woods dev team is seen in almost every "cozy" game with a dark underbelly today. You see traces of it in A Short Hike, Mutazione, and Fall After Fall. They proved that you could sell a game based entirely on "vibes" and prose.
But there’s a darker lesson too. The story of Infinite Fall is a cautionary tale about the "indie darling" phenomenon. When a small team becomes the face of a movement, the pressure can be catastrophic. Scott Benson has since moved on to form The Glory Society, a worker-owned cooperative. This was a direct response to his experience as a night in the woods dev. He wanted a structure that was more sustainable, more democratic, and less reliant on the "genius" of a single individual.
The Glory Society’s first big project, Revenant Hill, was unfortunately cancelled due to health issues within the team. It was a heartbreaking moment for fans, but it reinforced a lesson the NITW devs have been shouting for years: creators are human beings. They get sick. They burn out. They aren't content machines.
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Real-World Takeaways for Fans and Creators
If you’re looking at the history of these developers, don’t just look at the code. Look at the labor.
- Workplace Structure Matters: The shift from a loose collective (Infinite Fall) to a co-op (Glory Society) shows that the way we make games is just as important as the game itself.
- Mental Health is Non-Negotiable: The development of NITW was plagued by burnout. If you're a dev, your health is more important than your release date. Period.
- Separating Art from Artist: This is the big one. Night in the Woods belongs to the players now. You can appreciate the music Alec wrote while acknowledging the pain associated with his life. It’s okay for it to be complicated.
The legacy of the night in the woods dev journey isn't a clean one. It’s not a "success story" in the traditional sense. It’s a story about a group of people who made something that changed thousands of lives, only to have their own lives upended by the process. It’s a reminder that behind every "Masterpiece" tag on Steam, there are real people who are often just as lost as Mae Borowski, trying to figure out how to exist in a world that keeps moving even when they want it to stop.
Moving Forward: What You Can Do
If you want to support the spirit of what the night in the woods dev team started, look into the current indie landscape. Follow the individual paths of the creators. Scott Benson continues to be a vocal advocate for labor rights in gaming. Check out the work of the former collaborators.
Don't just consume the game; engage with the ideas it presented. Read up on the Rust Belt economics that inspired Possum Springs. Support worker-owned studios. The best way to honor a game that was about the importance of community and the struggles of the working class is to actually care about those things in the real world.
The story of the developers is a hard one, but it's an essential part of the game's DNA. You can't have one without the other. Understanding that complexity is the first step toward being a more conscious fan in an industry that often tries to hide its scars.