What am I playing? - Oxenfree

Released: January 15^th, 2016

Genre: Adventure Game

Developed and Published by: Night School Studio

Platform: PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, Xbox One, PS4 and Nintendo Switch

I played on: Xbox One

Rated: T for Teen

Oxenfree is a side scrolling graphic adventure game that follows a group of teenagers on a seemingly innocent beach trip, who awaken vengeful ghosts hell bent on escaping their island prison. Players assume the role of Alex, a teenage girl who finds herself at the centre of the spectres plot and must race against time to save her friends and escape the island – before the spirits do.

Through dialogue and exploration the player slowly uncovers the secrets of the island and its mysterious inhabitants, all the while making choices that will influence their relationships with other characters and lead to one of several possible endings.

The first game produced by developer Night School Studios after the company was founded in 2014, Oxenfree was initially released in 2016 for PC, Mac and Xbox One and has since been adapted for pretty much every other mainstream platform that exists. It received mostly positive reviews and while the games flaws did not go unnoticed Oxenfree became an overnight indie hit, receiving praise for its intelligent writing and spectacular digitally painted art style. Before the game was even released it was announced that The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman's company Skybound Entertainment would be helping to adapt Oxenfree for other media, including a making of web documentary series and a feature film. The making of series was released on youtube in January 2016, and is included with copies of the game.

As a lover of story driven games the graphic adventure genre to which Oxenfree belongs would seem to be right up my alley, but unfortunately I missed out on them entirely growing up. For decades the adventure genre all but dominated the computer games industry, but while it was reaching its peak in the mid 1990's my family was just figuring out how to set up its first PC, and I was too small to reach the mouse and keyboard. By the time I was old enough to appreciate them graphic adventure games had been relegated to a niche market by the rise of console shooters, and it would be years later still before they began to make a comeback - but come back they did. In recent years games like Life is Strange and Telltale Games expansive licensed catalogue have reintroduced graphic adventure games to mainstream audiences, and the genre is quickly making up for lost time. I'm thrilled to have a second chance to experience the stories that can be told through these types of games, and Oxenfree is a great one to start with. 

The peaceful ferry ride to Edwards Island in the opening minutes of Oxenfree is about as serene as the game gets from then on. It's about the only time during the story when our protagonist Alex isn’t dealing with angry poltergeists, terrifying time loops or mean-girls drama (any high school graduate will tell you that it's a toss up which of those three is worse).

Alex is a likeable character with a lot going on in her life. Though her motivations and responses are determined by the player much of her personality is predefined. She's spunky and intelligent, outwardly confident and armed with a quip for any occasion. As with any teenager she has her own demons to wrestle with even before taking on the literal ones living on the island. The death of her brother Micheal fractured her family and broke apart her parents marriage, and on the night the story takes place she is meeting her new step-brother Jonas for the first time.

The night in question is an annual right of passage for high school seniors in their small town, making the trek to the island to drink and party on the beach after the custodians of the small tourist trap have gone back to the mainland for the night. It's an adventure in itself – if a mundane one – but after tuning into a strange radio signal emanating from a cave on the beach Alex accidentally opens a tear in space and time, allowing the spirits trapped inside to begin manipulating events on the island. From there Alex and her friends are separated and she must travel across the island to reunite them and formulate a plan to escape.

Oxenfree is a dialogue heavy game, with branching dialogue trees and a system that allows you to move around freely and interrupt other characters during conversations. However, unlike most traditional graphic adventure games Oxenfree doesn’t spare much thought for inventory or alternate paths. The items you'll need to progress are found during the course of the story and are put there to serve a singular function. In other words, you'll get what you need when you need it, and you'll get where you need to go when you need to be there. That’s not to say that you can't make things easier or harder on yourself, or that you don't have tools at your disposal. Alex's trusty radio is the primary way you'll interact with the world. Tuning into radio signals around the island allows you do all sorts of things, from opening locked doors to fighting off angry ghosts. A particularly neat idea is the radio tour, which lets you tune into a signal at certain locations around the island to learn about areas of historical interest. Paying attention to this information will help in your interactions with the ghosts and sometimes give you more options when dealing with them, but the ghosts aren’t the only ones you need to deal with.  

Alex's friends have motivations and personalities of their own, and all are dealing with the threat of ghostly possession and terror in their own way. Those ways may be at odds with Alex's, and how she responds to them will affect the other characters relationships and opinions of her. In particular Alex's new stepbrother Jonas is the one she will have by her side for most of her adventure, and it's up to the player whether or not she is welcoming and supportive of her new sibling or distant and resentful. 

These interactions and the more obvious choices that you make along the way will impact your experience and the ending you get, though much of the criticism towards the game was aimed at the fact that the dialogue choices offered seemingly little impact on the ultimate ending. While I can't say that I fully agree with that I will concede that it was difficult to tell what – if any – impact my choices were having at the time I made them, or which dialogue choices would later turn out to be significant.

One issue I did have was how long it takes to get anywhere. The island is divided into several areas and while none of them are especially large the winding paths you often must take and the slow speed at which the characters move can make for a tedious experience. I have a feeling this was done to allow time for dialogue to play out while still letting the player move freely towards their goal - and when that's what you're trying to do it works out fine. But it soon becomes boring when you need to backtrack through an area to pick up something you missed or hunt for collectibles – some of which can only be obtained later in the game from areas you've already cleared. At one point early on you are given the option to try and escape from somewhere by going back the way you came or to press on into danger. Thinking that maybe the sensible choice would yield a better result I chose to backtrack only to get all the way back to the beginning of the area and find that – oh no! The way is blocked – and you have to go all the way back to where you were. It was there that I understood it wasn’t going to be that kind of choice-based narrative, but it might have been nice to have that blocked path pop up a little closer to where I started.

Overall though this is an issue that's easily overlooked. Most of the time there’s enough happening in each area to keep you from getting bored as you move through it so if you follow the story as it's presented you'll usually be able to avoid the problem entirely.

Clocking in at roughly five hours Oxenfree was a fun ride that kept me interested with an engaging story and beautiful set-pieces. Alex and her friends manage to avoid falling into generic teen tropes, and instead come off the way you'd expect – young people trapped in a scary situation who react as rationally as could be reasonably expected. The dark atmosphere and haunting art style match the characters feelings, though the tone is kept light enough that to me it never really felt like a horror game. But that's alright, since by the time you reach the end it's clear that there's more going on here than your typical ghost story, and you wonder if anyone on the island is truly in control.

Thanks for reading “What am I playing?”. If Oxenfree sounds like it might be your kind of game you can check out the launch trailer here, or if you're interested in a behind the scenes look at what goes into making a game like this you can find Skybound's documentary series here. You may also recall that I mentioned Oxenfree in a recent Words to Know entry on New Game Plus modes, and without giving too much away I can tell you that Oxenfree is worth playing through twice if you enjoyed it the first time.