Being a high school kid can be hard sometimes. You got to deal with a
lot of changes: problems and drama in those early years, most of which
doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things and you won’t
remember in a few years time. There’s usually some name calling and peer
pressure, most kids have stressful exam periods, and remember the time
you and your friends stumbled across that specter ridden mystery island?
I know I do, but it all just builds character right?
Oxenfree kicks off with our main character, Alex, on the last ferry of the day to Edward’s Island. She’s accompanied by her best friend, stoner and know-it-all Ren and a new addition to her family in the form of a stepbrother, Jonas.
This ferry ride acts as a big world building dump as Ren spends most of it waxing lyrically about the history of the island. Not so subtly dropping in about the abandoned military base, the islands only resident - Maggie Adler - who had recently died, and the whole reason our heroes are going to the island, to take a butt load of drugs and have a party. This is also where we get introduced to the solitary mechanic of Oxenfree, a handheld radio that you can tune to different stations and listen in to various static and sometimes, if you’re lucky, someone rambling on about whatever landmark you’re standing near at the time.
After the three stooges reach Edward’s Island we’re introduced to two more to round off the group; Clarissa - the class bitch, and Nona - Clarissa’s best friend and Ren's infatuation. The frantic five have a quick bitching session including some more story dump - including Clarissa digging at Alex for her dead brother - after which Ren drags Alex and Jonas off towards a mystical cave.
Oxenfree is an adventure game at heart with gameplay almost completely driven by the players conversation decisions. What this means is when a character decides to talk at you for a few minutes, every now and again three dialog balloons appear around Alex’s head and you have to pick one before the they disappear. Each dialogue balloon can result in different responses and different outcomes which is great for a story but an arse for the player that will have to go through the same stupid dialogue trees multiple times if they want 100% completion. As is the problem in most games with conversation trees, the option you choose doesn’t always have bearing on what Alex is going to retaliate with. For example; if a balloon came up that would compliment another character if chosen, more often than not Alex would blurt out something along the lines of “you’re not that bad” or “I’ve known worse people”. More of a back handed compliment but still a compliment I guess.
Getting back to the all important story of this adventure in this story driven adventure game, and things take a turn for the bizarre when Alex uses the all purpose plot device - the radio - to open a rift into another dimension. Everyone blacks out for a while and when they come to they’ve all been scattered around the island. From here on out the game slams its brakes on pacing wise as you spend the next hour or so trudging around the island looking for your hipster bastard friends, when most sane people would have just waited by the dock until morning and got the hell off that island. I guess that wouldn’t make for good gameplay though so Alex chooses to search for her missing friends discovering hidden secrets about the island as she goes.
The radio frequencies play a big part in Oxenfree; you can tune into certain stations to hear some fluff piece about how the island came to be or why the random statue you’re currently standing next to is where it is. What it’s used for mostly though is progressing the story. As I mentioned earlier you use the radio to open another dimension. What this entails is when you see a weird floating triangle in the sky you tune the radio to whatever station causes the controller to vibrate until the triangle sprouts a little white line and connects to another triangle. I’m not going to try and explain what happens when you do this because I don’t think the writers really had any idea what it meant either so we’re all on the same page at least.
You remember that specter thing I alluded to earlier, we’ll you’d be a bit of an idiot if you thought that was a red herring. It turns out that the island’s shrouded, mysterious history revolves around the residents of the army base Ren informed us about on the ferry. As she traverses the island, Alex experiences time loops - glitches in reality that replay certain moments over. This is all thanks to the ghosts of the island that are looking for a way to exist again and they’ve chosen Alex and her friends to do so. The spirits inhabit Clarissa and use her to mess with Alex and the gang, at one point throwing Clarissa to her death several times while going through multiple time loops.
All of the temporal shenanigans going on creates a great atmosphere for Oxenfree that keeps you guessing for a while, especially when Alex starts interacting with her reflections. One thing I will give Oxenfree is its use of the 2.5D setting. It’s essentially laid out like a point and click game, with characters moving along a 2D axis while utilising the depth of the setting. It’s nothing new or special but the well thought out use of the background imagery and lightning effects deserves a mention. Oxenfree doesn’t push any graphical boundaries, it knows what it can do and sticks to that.
After about 3 hours of talking to anything that would talk back, solving puzzles that amount to you having to find a piece for a broken control panel or film for a projector that happens to be about ten yards away, Oxenfree starts stampeding towards its climax. The first half of the game is very much about building the world around you but the main problem I had is that there wasn’t as much to explain as the game thought there was, so it reiterated itself a lot. The second half of the game introduces a slight twist on the radio mechanic when you start using it to decipher clues and unlock doors - which, on a side note, makes no real sense. They try to explain it away with the frequency tripping some audio lock or some crap but I’m not buying it, just another way to keep the story moving forward.
Without spoiling, the ending of Oxenfree is weirdly cool if a little unsatisfying and needlessly convoluted.
I do like the premise that Oxenfree is based around, with its simplistic gameplay revolving around story with time loops and possessed friends, but at time it feels a bit into itself and honestly it is a bit padded at times. There’s about 4-5 hours of gameplay with a decent story skeleton in here. There could’ve even been a bit more to Oxenfree, given that the vagueness of the story could allow for things happening out of nowhere. If you’re in for an odd little indie game then Oxenfree will suffice for a short while, the characters can be surprisingly engaging at times and the solitary mechanic gives the game a simplistic charm without making it feel insubstantial.
Oxenfree kicks off with our main character, Alex, on the last ferry of the day to Edward’s Island. She’s accompanied by her best friend, stoner and know-it-all Ren and a new addition to her family in the form of a stepbrother, Jonas.
This ferry ride acts as a big world building dump as Ren spends most of it waxing lyrically about the history of the island. Not so subtly dropping in about the abandoned military base, the islands only resident - Maggie Adler - who had recently died, and the whole reason our heroes are going to the island, to take a butt load of drugs and have a party. This is also where we get introduced to the solitary mechanic of Oxenfree, a handheld radio that you can tune to different stations and listen in to various static and sometimes, if you’re lucky, someone rambling on about whatever landmark you’re standing near at the time.
After the three stooges reach Edward’s Island we’re introduced to two more to round off the group; Clarissa - the class bitch, and Nona - Clarissa’s best friend and Ren's infatuation. The frantic five have a quick bitching session including some more story dump - including Clarissa digging at Alex for her dead brother - after which Ren drags Alex and Jonas off towards a mystical cave.
Oxenfree is an adventure game at heart with gameplay almost completely driven by the players conversation decisions. What this means is when a character decides to talk at you for a few minutes, every now and again three dialog balloons appear around Alex’s head and you have to pick one before the they disappear. Each dialogue balloon can result in different responses and different outcomes which is great for a story but an arse for the player that will have to go through the same stupid dialogue trees multiple times if they want 100% completion. As is the problem in most games with conversation trees, the option you choose doesn’t always have bearing on what Alex is going to retaliate with. For example; if a balloon came up that would compliment another character if chosen, more often than not Alex would blurt out something along the lines of “you’re not that bad” or “I’ve known worse people”. More of a back handed compliment but still a compliment I guess.
Getting back to the all important story of this adventure in this story driven adventure game, and things take a turn for the bizarre when Alex uses the all purpose plot device - the radio - to open a rift into another dimension. Everyone blacks out for a while and when they come to they’ve all been scattered around the island. From here on out the game slams its brakes on pacing wise as you spend the next hour or so trudging around the island looking for your hipster bastard friends, when most sane people would have just waited by the dock until morning and got the hell off that island. I guess that wouldn’t make for good gameplay though so Alex chooses to search for her missing friends discovering hidden secrets about the island as she goes.
The radio frequencies play a big part in Oxenfree; you can tune into certain stations to hear some fluff piece about how the island came to be or why the random statue you’re currently standing next to is where it is. What it’s used for mostly though is progressing the story. As I mentioned earlier you use the radio to open another dimension. What this entails is when you see a weird floating triangle in the sky you tune the radio to whatever station causes the controller to vibrate until the triangle sprouts a little white line and connects to another triangle. I’m not going to try and explain what happens when you do this because I don’t think the writers really had any idea what it meant either so we’re all on the same page at least.
You remember that specter thing I alluded to earlier, we’ll you’d be a bit of an idiot if you thought that was a red herring. It turns out that the island’s shrouded, mysterious history revolves around the residents of the army base Ren informed us about on the ferry. As she traverses the island, Alex experiences time loops - glitches in reality that replay certain moments over. This is all thanks to the ghosts of the island that are looking for a way to exist again and they’ve chosen Alex and her friends to do so. The spirits inhabit Clarissa and use her to mess with Alex and the gang, at one point throwing Clarissa to her death several times while going through multiple time loops.
All of the temporal shenanigans going on creates a great atmosphere for Oxenfree that keeps you guessing for a while, especially when Alex starts interacting with her reflections. One thing I will give Oxenfree is its use of the 2.5D setting. It’s essentially laid out like a point and click game, with characters moving along a 2D axis while utilising the depth of the setting. It’s nothing new or special but the well thought out use of the background imagery and lightning effects deserves a mention. Oxenfree doesn’t push any graphical boundaries, it knows what it can do and sticks to that.
After about 3 hours of talking to anything that would talk back, solving puzzles that amount to you having to find a piece for a broken control panel or film for a projector that happens to be about ten yards away, Oxenfree starts stampeding towards its climax. The first half of the game is very much about building the world around you but the main problem I had is that there wasn’t as much to explain as the game thought there was, so it reiterated itself a lot. The second half of the game introduces a slight twist on the radio mechanic when you start using it to decipher clues and unlock doors - which, on a side note, makes no real sense. They try to explain it away with the frequency tripping some audio lock or some crap but I’m not buying it, just another way to keep the story moving forward.
Without spoiling, the ending of Oxenfree is weirdly cool if a little unsatisfying and needlessly convoluted.
I do like the premise that Oxenfree is based around, with its simplistic gameplay revolving around story with time loops and possessed friends, but at time it feels a bit into itself and honestly it is a bit padded at times. There’s about 4-5 hours of gameplay with a decent story skeleton in here. There could’ve even been a bit more to Oxenfree, given that the vagueness of the story could allow for things happening out of nowhere. If you’re in for an odd little indie game then Oxenfree will suffice for a short while, the characters can be surprisingly engaging at times and the solitary mechanic gives the game a simplistic charm without making it feel insubstantial.
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