There are optional items to discover, the letters of Maggie Adler, which flesh out the island’s backstory and fill in the details involving the teens’ encounter with the supernatural. It is quite easy to play the game through without figuring out what’s going on. This story is told in a unique way and its supernatural elements are not easily categorized as belonging to just another ghost story, though comparisons to monster-of-the-week format shows like The X-Files are perhaps unavoidable. Figuring out what has happened to the teens as they’re separated and frightened, trying to come to grips with who or what it is they’re facing is the hook of Oxenfree. What was meant to be a overnight party quickly turns into something much darker. ![]() Jonas spies something strange like a light inside of the cave and he ventures in to explore, Alex following, and that’s where things begin to go crazy. That doesn’t include his special brownies.Īt the mouth of the cave, Ren asks Alex to use the pocket radio he asked her to bring along and together the three of them listen to otherworldly noises coming in through the static. Thankfully, some respite is found when Ren takes Alex and Jonas to a nearby cave to show off some weird stuff. Alex, Ren, and Jonas meet up at the beach on the island with Clarissa, who was Michael’s girlfriend, and Nona, Clarissa’s tag-along and someone Ren is interested in.Īlex and Jonas learn about the island as a former military base and the passing of its solitary resident, Maggie Adler, but tensions rise when Clarissa brings up the circumstances involving Michael’s death and Alex’s parent’s subsequent divorce which lead to Jonas becoming the stepbro. Along for the ride is her best friend Ren, a fast-talking stoner, and Alex’s new stepbrother Jonas, who she has just met. Oxenfree follows Alex, a witty teenage girl who takes a weekend trip by boat to Edwards Island. Fortunately, Oxenfree confines its dialogue to sets of three hipster-font choices at a time. Branching dialogue trees are a useful implementation for giving players choices (the fundamental difference between games and film), but choices are useful only if they’re not daunting in their scale. Oxenfree is a fairly short game but if the player were given too many choices it could have been paralyzing or the size of the game in all of its possibilities might have become too big to reasonably complete. However, with the promise of freedom comes the danger of too many possibilities. Oxenfree, on the other hand, is a game essentially told without cutscenes. Many (most?) story-heavy games force control away from the player during compartmentalized storytelling sequences. Additionally, the player character is able to move freely during any conversation, giving the game a kind of realism and engaging quality far more interactive than others which aim for a more passive, cinematic approach. The result of their ambition is a game which streamlines dialogue exchange by allowing the player to choose how to interact in conversation and whether to interact or not, with their choices influencing a variety of possibilities within the game’s story and conclusions. ![]() ![]() With Oxenfree, they attempted to create a game where choices in conversation formed the base mechanic but players were still granted a degree of freedom, giving those choices meaningful value rather than merely choosing the “flavored” response for an outcome that was 100% predetermined. They knew they wanted to create a story-driven game yet storytelling structures in many games were rigidly linear or bogged down by too many cutscenes (thy name is Xenoblade Chronicles 2). ![]() Krankel had gained previous game development experience working for Telltale Games and Hines also had a background working with Disney Interactive Studios, but in coming together to create their own game they emphasized playing their cards differently. Spielbergian, channeling Stephen King, however you want to slice it, Oxenfree is a teen coming-of-age story that flirts with the supernatural without stepping wholeheartedly into horror, a game with a focused, central idea. Indie games often have a special kind of boldness to try something new on a small budget and this game is a fine example of that. There is such purity, a clarity of vision with many indie first efforts of humble origins. In October 2014, cousins Sean Krankel and Adam Hines founded Night School Studio and their game development debut would be the mystery adventure Oxenfree. “Never did the world make a queen of a girl who hides in houses and dreams without traveling.”
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