Oxenfree, by Night School Studios

Games
1

This game didn’t have a thread that I could find…in fact, the only mention of the game I spotted was from malkav11, who mentioned it in the March Game of the Month thread.

It probably deserves more than that, even if this game isn’t your cuppa.

I only noticed it because one of the developers at CDPR tweeted out that he was playing it. I took a look at it and was immediately captivated by the art style. It was one of those “I want to go to there” moments.

The game itself (and I can’t stress enough: DON’T LOOK FOR TRAILERS ON YOUTUBE! THEY’RE FULL OF SPOILERS!!) is pretty much right up my alley. A group of ordinary teenagers gather on an island for a fun, spooky overnight hangout. You play as Alex, a girl whose parents got divorced and whose mother recently remarried. Your new stepbrother, Jonas, is tagging along on the trip. You two don’t know each other well. Awkward.

Oh, and the island? Yeah, haunted. Totally haunted.

Most of what the game is involves unraveling stories. Sure, the big hook I guess is the mystery of the island. But there are other things to discover, like Alex’s past, Jonas’s past, their family, and other bits. The teenagers on the island all seem to have secrets from one another. Figuring those out is just as enjoyable so far as the island mystery…which is not to say that the island mystery isn’t interesting either. It is.

I guess what makes this work for me, though, is that I care about the characters, especially Alex, but also the others in a way that I think Alex would care about them. They’re interesting, funny, stupid, and wonderfully emo in the way that teenagers just are. Polygon called this Freaks & Geeks meets Poltergeist, and that’s probably not too far off. The voice acting is terrific. The cast I guess is a bunch of vets of Telltale Studio games, so they know how to do voice work for games.

The gameplay involves a lot of choices. Sometimes it’s paths to take or not take or not take at specific times. The puzzles aren’t too terribly complicated at all. In fact, for gameplay it might be a bit threadbare for folks; this isn’t the game for you if you’re looking for depth on that part. The things you do can get repetitive pretty quickly, although it’s never really a drudge.

There are some rookie developer mistakes here, too. Whomever thought I’d enjoy climbing up and down the tower multiple times? Yeah, no. One of the main mechanisms for solving puzzles isn’t very challenging, and as mentioned, it can be a bit repetitive.

So here’s the deal though. It’s a cold and windy night here on the east coast. There’s a storm howling outside, making eerie noises as the gale blows through the shutters outside. It’s the perfect kind of night for a good ghost story, and this seems like a good ghost story so far (I’m about 4 hours in.) It evokes wonderful feelings about being a teenager huddled around a bonfire with friends, surreptitiously sipping beer (and trying not to make faces), telling ghost stories and urban legends and playing truth or dare. It gets all of that so, so right.

It feels a lot like Gone Home, in a few ways. It’s obviously a different art style (but the art style here is just gorgeous; this is a beautiful game) and I think probably a different story outcome and goal, but still. The somewhat thin gameplay but wonderful storytelling that feels so real and right is what makes me think of GH when playing this.

Be curious to hear others’ thoughts on this.

2

I have this but haven’t really had time to play it for more than a few minute. I like the artistic style and it does seem very youth oriented. OTOH, i though the dialog felt stilted, more like “this is how adults think kids talk” than actually dialog teenagers would actually say, in contrast to everyone else who liked the dialog. Then i noticed in one episode the Geek Remix girls agreed with my assessment so it’s not just me, but of course i haven’t really gotten into it that much either. Sort of saving this one for a rainy day.

3

I didn’t, certainly not to nearly the extent that say, Life is Strange raised such flags (but then, some people have claimed LiS reflects the way they’ve heard actual teenagers speaking, so maybe I’m just out of touch with the youth). I am mostly enjoying the game but, yeah…the way you have to manually move Alex around at all times and there are constant shifts in direction is not my favorite thing once they start asking you to backtrack. It’s one thing to have something to keep my hands occupied as funny dialogue is going on, another to have to put that much effort into retreading places I’ve already been when nothing much is happening. Also, while I appreciate the ability to just remain silent in conversation, it would be nice if you could consistently pick a dialogue option (to avoid missing it as the rapid fade ensues) and have it hold off on actually executing until the other character is finished with their line. It happens sometimes, but a lot of the time I end up suddenly cutting the other person off.

4

Oh, I think that’s definitely there. This isn’t really how kids talk.

It’s a Whedon-esque like verisimilitude of that, however, and for that it’s rock solid and aces the task of keeping me interested in the characters and their motivations and stories.

5

Yea, that’s a good way of putting it. In that case i’d agree.

6

[NO SPOILERS HERE]

I watched a playthrough of the game and it seems like a great game - good production values, nice animations, interesting story. And I agree the characters are for the most part interesting and appealing enough that you care what happens to them. In addition to the story, which can play out different ways, there is also some deep-cover ARG stuff going on with respect to some info/data/items in the game and links to stuff in the real world. This game does a great job of setting up a spooky vibe without relying on stupid stuff like jumpscares.

About the only negative I can think of for the game is the amount of backtracking you end up doing… it seemed like a lot, and I don’t know if there’s any way to speed up the animations (the characters walk at a leisurely pace and it feels like they climb up/hop down really slowly).

7

See Tom?

We had a thread where I said “This game is great!”

8

Tom’s 5-star front page review is up.

Seriously, why aren’t y’all playing this game?!?!

9

Ah, thanks for bumping the thread. I went to search for a thread and here it is on the first page of the forum!

Really, I knew nothing about this thing. The only reason I played it was because someone on Twitter named coolbeans (Is that one of you guys here on the forum? I can’t keep everyone’s goofy internet names straight!) mentioned it in reference to Soma. Which was all I needed to hear. So I grabbed it on Steam…

…and it sat in the queue. And sat there. And sat there. And sat there.

Frankly, I could have just as easily uninstalled it as booted it up. But lately, I’ve been wanting to play something story-driven. I’ve tried Adrift, Pollen, Life is Strange, and Cinders, all of which were in my queue. For various reasons, each of those bounced off me. But I got wrapped up in Oxenfree from the very first moment. And good lord, that naturalistic conversation system! What a great way to highlight the dialogue and the talented cast. Charlatan, I think you kind of miss out on something by just watching it. The pacing and your involvement in the dialogue is a lot of what makes it work. There are time when you think you might want to say something but don’t press the speech bubble in time. I’m convinced those are intentional. I’m convinced the developers use that as a way to get you into Alex’s head. At least that’s how it felt to me. Because there are definitely times when you interrupt the conversation at the moment you press the speech bubble. Oxenfree is inviting you to participate in real time. You can’t quite appreciate that without actually playing it.

And I have to say I don’t really care whether it’s how teenagers really talk. There’s an unintentionally funny moment Jonas brings up Little House on the Prairie. What 17-year-old knows what Little House on the Prairie is? The writer was definitely dating himself there. But since when is authenticity a requirement for good storytelling? I guess if I was a teenager it might bother me that I’m not being accurately represented. Or maybe if I thought it was trying to be some sort of relevant commentary about kids today. But that’s not what Oxenfree is doing. The appeal of coming-of-age stories is that we’ve all come of age, regardless of when we did it. :)

I like your point about caring about the other characters, Chris. I hadn’t really thought of that. Of course you sympathize with a protagonist, but Oxenfree is really good at making all the characters matter, at playing like an ensemble even though it’s very much a first-person story. I especially like how it developers the relationship between Alex and Clarissa. That’s some really good writing.

You guys mentioned the backtracking, but I thought it was handled just fine (unless you’re doing to collectibles, in which case you’re just asking for backtracking!). The map is so explicit about where you go, and in my experience, the traversal time is almost always filled with for dialogue. In fact, on several occasions, I sat waiting at a hotspot for the dialogue to play out. Kind of like listening to something on the radio as you get home and waiting in the driveway for it to finish.

Anyway, what a great set of characters, what a wonderful dialogue system, and what a pretty decent story. Here’s my review.

-Tom

10

The subtitles are on bottom, but if you look down, you don’t see the top dialog much, and theres clues there. Also the radio signals don’t seems to have subtitles.

Not very friendly to not native speakers.

11

This pique my interest and is the next game I’m gonna try after I’m done beating Offworld at Manager level. Hopefully by then, Steam sale is where I can snag it at a cheaper price.

12

I’ve got some Uncharted and Doom to finish up, but this is next I think. Thanks!

13

This game is really neat. Not sure I can add too much to what has been written above as I am only a couple of hours in (though I understand it’s not a long game by any stretch), and I am thoroughly enjoying it. Get a bit of a Swords and Sworcery vibe in the weirdness of it all.

14

Oxenfree is 50% off on Steam until August 8th! $9.99.

Between Midnight Special, Stranger Things, and (what I’ve heard about) Oxenfree, it’s a good time to be a sci-fi child of the 80’s!

15

… and now $4.99 on Steam.

16

Link to STEAM , how was this not linked yet? :p

17

Just buy it, he said.

18

Ok I bought it, geez.

19

Almost bought this at full price on the Xbone a few weeks back, totally bought.

20

I played for an hour the other night, but the slow movement was getting annoying to me. I had to traverse the map for the next part and I just quit because I didn’t feel like doing the trudge across the map. A point and click to move would have been better, but still too slow for me. I have never been much of an adventure game player, so maybe it is just me?