![]() If the characters were tiresome, boring, or two-dimensional, a game all about talking to them would be a painful experience. Same goes for conversations interrupted by spooky transmissions, or sudden, jarring hallucinations. Jump across a chasm between two cliffs while idly chatting and your friends won’t just keep talking about the weather, they’ll stop to recognize how badass/insane what you did just was. You chat while walking to the beach, cutting through the woods, while exploring an abandoned military base, and the conversation follows naturally. These conversations are not done in cutscenes or discrete “talking moments,” they’re the life blood flowing through the entire game. A nice change from the “pick blue for good, red for bad” dichotomy of many game’s dialogue systems. Occasionally you come to linchpin decision moments that can take you down alternate paths in the game, but mostly the choices are subtlety baked into the experience. You dialogue choices will effect how the other kids see you and your relationship with them. There is no outwardly visible karma meter or “so-and-so will remember that” comments in the game, but your words have meaning. She jokes with her friends, gets freaked out, and argues over pointless trivia, like a real person who suddenly found themselves in an unreal situation would. She’s a teenaged girl who had a lot on her shoulders before the whole spooky-possibly-haunted-island thing started happening and she carries herself like one. Unlike the galaxy-saving Shepard however, Alex’s (the playable protagonist) dialogue isn’t laced with heroic speeches or badass threats. The tone of the response is hinted at by the phrase in the word balloon similar to the system used in Mass Effect (and done noticeably better than in Fallout 4, I might add). ![]() The single most mechanically meaningful thing you do in the game is respond to dialogue options in Aaron Sorkin-style “walk-and-talk” conversations that alternate seamlessly between sarcastic teen bonding, stick-a-knife-in-it awkward stand-offs, and genuinely touching moments.Įach conversation option is represented by word balloons you pick with a touch of a button. There are no real puzzles to solve, no panicky QTEs to click on, no last-minute boss fight to clumsily fumble through. Let me say it plainly, Oxenfree is very light on gameplay. It soaks it all in a phenomenal synth-heavy soundtrack from SCNTFC (Galax-Z, Sword & Sworcery) that perfectly alternates between wistful and unnerving. The normally smooth picture-book aesthetic of Oxenfree‘s world makes it all the more unnerving when the entity breaks its way into reality with Tron-like neon colors and sharp geometric shapes hanging unnaturally in the sky. The island destination is rendered in a gorgeous dreamlike art style of watercolors and soft light. Testing out an urban myth involving radio signals and a spooky cave, they accidentally unleash a mysterious entity that seems to have a strange relationship to normal space and time and nothing but malicious intentions on them. Oxenfree starts with a group of teenagers having a party on an island tourist trap (and one-time military base) near their hometown. Since you’re not wading through blood and viscera at all times, the few moments of hard-hitting violence and terror are that much more jarring. Think of it more like It Follows than Sleep Away Camp. Oxenfree trades in unease and tension more than outright scares. This isn’t an Amnesia-style gorefest or a Freddy‘s jumpscare marathon. I say “horror” in quotes because the actual spook-factor of Oxenfree isn’t that high. It might just be the best “horror” game I’ve played in years. It dials into its own style and mood, tapping into something very heartfelt and special. It takes inspiration and cues from old movie tropes and survival horror games but it plays with them, using the expectations they instill to head-fake the audience. However, Oxenfree is anything but generic. ![]() They uncover secrets that hint that the tourist town they’ve arrived in might not be as quaint as they thought. They poke around where they shouldn’t, accidentally wake up a long-dormant supernatural force that immediately begins to work its dark intentions against them. Not long after they get there though, odd things start to happen. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A group of teenagers head to a remote, nearly abandoned tourist trap for a night of wild partying.
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