I freaking love this game. Mystery games are really making a comeback in recent years after their DOS heyday and this one just nails it. There is so much mystery in Oxenfree that the game actually spawns into a post game ARG (alternate reality game) which is weird and cool and not as obvious of a marketing gimmick like most ARG's. The characters and story are fantastic. The voice acting especially is superb and easily among the best EVER in a video game. The gameplay is simple but actually complements the story rather than distract from it. This game is so good I'm actually delaying a ready to go blogpost because I now need to re-write part of it.
I'm going to have to spoil the first 15 minutes of this game a few paragraphs down. If you want to go in completely blind, stop reading.
Oxenfree is about a group of teenagers who go to an island for a "generic all night teenage party-debauchery". The player character, a girl named Alex, brings her radio because creepy broadcast anomalies are rumored to occur on the island. You do this and shit gets weird. The rest of the game is about figuring out what the hell is going on.
Blue-ish hair is just a coincidence I promise.
The game is highly story driven so relies heavily on dialogue and player input on that dialogue. Almost no lines are said by Alex without player input (which is pretty incredible if you think about it). Almost every line Alex says is chosen out of three possible options and flow naturally with conversation. These conversations typically happen while moving around the environment and exploring, rather than the old RPG standard of standing in one spot to talk. You can do other things while choosing dialogue tree options and it works really well. Granted most of those other things is just running around and exploring but hey.
My only real criticism with the game is the dialogue tree has two, for lack of a better word, "types" that the player has no way of knowing about before hand. Some dialogue options will interrupt another character speaking while others will wait for the other character to finish speaking before Alex will. A majority of the options seem like the interrupt type, so if you want to hear the other character finish their thought, you have to gamble with a dialogue option that fades away and click on it at the last possible second. It is too easy to miss an option if you click on it juuuuust too late and just because you wanted to hear what the other character had to say. This also kind of makes Alex look like an asshole who is always interrupting her friends but conversations happen pretty naturally regardless of these interruptions so it's only a minor criticism. You have the option to not say anything in any of these interrupt dialogue trees as they fade away but that usually feels less natural. Basically, awkward silence often leaving a conversation hanging.
The options follow Alex like comic book style text bubbles.
The characters are great with solid writing and fantastic voice acting. It sometimes has a little of Life is Strange syndrome with some of the dialogue being a little too witty for a teenager but only barely. The writing does age-up the characters a bit but I thought it was pretty average for the age of the characters even if occasional lines seemed more natural to a character in their early 20's. Their actual ages are ambiguous but dialogue about college suggests they are around 18, or at least high school seniors, which makes the aging up pretty forgivable. Also, there was no painful eye-roll inducing dialogue except for some of Ren and Jonas' jokes which were purposely bad. I may have been blinded by the excellent voice acting to notice any egregiously bad lines or the voice acting was so good they elevated any bad lines. The voice cast is truly excellent and mostly unknown actors.
The characters are developed really well and are given personality and backstory just 15 minutes into the game. Alex is sort of the leader of the group, somewhat forced into that role, but she plays it well. Her personality is a little more basic as it can be altered by the player but within the framework of the game. She is kind of a smart ass and a bit sarcastic at times, but she can take things seriously too. She might be the one most willing to solve the mystery of the island.
The other characters you meet first is Alex's best friend Ren, who is something of a hipster doofus, and Jonas, her JUST met step-brother. Ren talks a lot, A LOT, and talks quickly. He also provides levity as he isn't always taking everything as seriously as he probably should. Jonas' mother died and his father got with Alex's mother and they see the island trip as a good chance to get to know one another. He is somewhat of a foil since you spend much of the game with him as Alex's "sidekick". He spends a lot of time initiating conversation for the player to respond too but his back and forth with Alex is well done. He is a character in his own right.
There is occasional photo taking. Part of this games weird aesthetic.
Soon you meet the last two of the group. Nona is probably the least developed as the shy, quiet girl who Ren has a thing for. She's still solid though and plays that archetype well. Then....there is Clarissa, or "Goddamnit Clarissa". Clarissa is a bitch and it's quickly established that she has a history with Alex. Just 15 minutes in the game, you learn Alex had another brother named Micheal who died. You can choose to bring this up or not but the dialogue option lets the player know. Later on in the game, you will learn the meaning of this conflict.
I bring this up because games rarely establish this much backstory in such a small time frame. Everything we need to know about them and their dynamic with each other is established so the game can focus on A.) figuring out what is going on with this island and B.) attempting to resolve conflicts within the group. Yes, it is contrived that a lot of this information comes from the group playing "truth or slap" on the beach, but it's a storytelling convention I'm fine with. RPG's typically have a character mention something vague with a box popping up about "codex/journal entry added" where you can read more. Here, the backstory is happening in the narrative of the game rather than needing to read about it elsewhere.
Oxenfree is supposedly a "supernatural thriller" which makes the tone generic creepy. This game isn't scary, at all, but it does have the occasional jumpscare which never got me. Ok...one got me but the horror level of this game is something akin to Tales From The Crypt, Are You Afraid of the Dark, or even The Twilight Zone. Oxenfree is more charming than eerie, though it does have its unsettling moments. It's more of a mystery game than a horror game.
OOOOOO. They glow red.
The art style is not usually a style I like, the Double Fine game style (sorta), but I love it in Oxenfree. It's a watercolor painting, Double Fine game, vague expressionism...with Poltergeist influences....if that makes sense. The game uses TV tracking lines sometimes and glitches as scares or just general creepiness. (It's not totally unlike Anatomy in this regard although I'd argue Anatomy does a better job with it considering each games intention with it. Oxenfree's glitches are more to add to the creepy tone, and it's very good, but Anatomy uses glitches to instill dread and it's perfect at it. Hard to beat perfect). How much of the glitches and static is for general aesthetic purposes and how much is for "scary game time", I'm not sure. Rarely, weird images will randomly pop up for a split second during these glitches but I instantly saw a number in one of them and thought, "this is cool" rather than "AHHH OH SHIT". Not sure if that was the intention but I liked it!
They are so fast screenshots are hard to find. Here's just regular glitch usage.
While the gameplay is mostly centered on exploring and conversation, there is also the radio that Alex brings with her. The radio is the primary puzzle solving tool.* It can also be used as a "walking tour guide" though the island. It's also useful to bring it up at random because the radio will pick up weird, creepy signals. This is everything from old timey broadcasts, to random gibberish, to actual morse code. Luckily, you can bring up the radio at any time, allowing a more free flowing style of exploration.
*Protip: There are piles of rocks that get the main story started at the beginning where Alex brings out the radio for. Well, the game doesn't outright say this but other piles of rocks can be found throughout the island. I found this out on complete accident but all those other piles are worthy to bring the radio out for too.
It's not the cleverest mechanic but it's alright.
The gameplay isn't groundbreaking or anything but that isn't really the focus of the game. The radio mechanic does start to get tiring near the end but luckily the game is only around 7 hours and mostly avoided padding. Don't be a long game if you don't need to be a long game, ya know what I mean? The mystery story throws in a lot of twists and wrinkles to keep you engaged, as well as the inter-personal stories between characters in the group. Obviously, a mystery story in a short game means I can't talk much about it due to spoilers, but it's really good. Despite the answers to the mystery being pretty straight forward, something about the story always feels a little off....and wow that ending.
The game has multiple endings dependent on the player's choices through the game. This is almost entirely on the groups relationships with each other and how you effect them. The main story mystery ending is pretty much the same for everyone and it's soooooo cool....but maybe kind of a gimmick? I swear other games have done this but I can't think of any off the top of my head and this aspect is too abstract to Google a list of others. I tried. I guess Undertale kind of, KIND OF did it but not really (I also didn't play that game. I'm going off what I've read about it). I know I'm being vague but lets just say the ending has a..."feature" that is absolutely great. And also a bit sad because it makes you want to look up more, which leads to the ARG* mentioned at the top of the post, but it's over. There are a lot of archives of it though, which is nice, I guess.
*That is NOT the only thing it leads too.
Oxenfree is a great game. If you liked Life is Strange, this game has a lot of similarities. It's sort of marketed as a horror game but it's not. I know some of the pictures I used make it look like a platformer, but it's also not that. It's just a great story driven mystery game with a charming/creepy setting. Charming and creepy, weird combination I know.
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I will talk about the ending some more in a future post filled with spoilers.
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