I tend to enjoy stories that deal with time paradoxes. They’re intriguing and immediately create questions about how everything in the story’s world works or may change as the plot progresses. I have a soft spot for adventure-style, dialogue-driven video games. These games tend to have a focus on story and their characters, which allows for a simpler, more focused attention to the plot that other games might not normally have. Oxenfree, a small indie game that was released in 2016, is both of these things.

The Short of It

What I’ve played

Completion of one playthrough; approx 6 hours

Pros

Dialogue is well-written and convincing and flows well with the deliberate gameplay choices
Intriguing story that utilizes hints of horror to keep things moving
Clever use of the Radio mechanic to make a relatively straightforward adventure game more interactive
Art style is simple, but colorful and has a dream-like quality to it that works well with the themes of the game
Great chill-wave soundtrack

Cons

Maneuvering the environment is a bit tedious, making exploration not much fun
UI about characters and how they feel towards each other is unclear
While the game allows you to openly explore the map for secrets, it still gates off sections based on plot alone (instead of abilities) making the experience somewhat disjointed in spots

The Rest of It

Story

A group of teenagers decides to head to a small island near their town for the night relax on the beach and do a bit of exploring. Alex, a turquoise-haired girl brings her new step-brother, Jonas, who just moved to town with her. Alex’s best friend, Ren, is trying to make the night a special one for everyone, especially because of how he’s into one of the other girls joining, Nona. Meanwhile, the slightly older member of the group, Clarissa, stands aloof in the group and does her best to be snarky and unpleasant towards Alex. It’s all pretty standard teenager stuff.

Then, while casually exploring a cave off the beach and messing around with some frequencies on her pocket radio, Alex unwittingly opens a tear in space time and the group gets transported across the island. As they all regroup, freaky things start happening. Ghosts seem to be floating around in the background. People’s eyes glow red and act possessed. Radio messages filled with unpleasant terminology and overt meanings fill the airwaves. And time seems to be repeating itself.

The story to Oxenfree is a relatively brief one, with the main arc of the plot being just to find everyone and get off the island. As things get more serious and a somewhat nefarious situation unfolds, it becomes clear that they can’t just leave the island if they expect to survive the night. All throughout the situation are moments in which the characters can interact with each other and develop their friendship or animosity under this stressful situation. Oxenfree sports several different ending scenarios as a result. Since it’s a relatively short game, you could feasibly play through it a few times to see the different outcomes.

The main strength in the story is the dialogue, though they tend to speak in mannerisms that I assume are only weird to me because I’m not a teenager in 2016. There are some archetypes the characters fit into, but they manage to grow and develop over the course of the game where they don’t seem like just a selection of cookie-cut character. The fact that, as the player, you can choose the different dialogue options that Alex can interject with (or remain silent) helps the dialogue flow well and feel natural. The voice-acting further enhances the dialogue’s delivery and helps make the characters stand out more. Though you have a small bit of control about how Alex acts towards the other characters, she seemed like a fully fleshed-out character by the end.

Gameplay

Oxenfree’s gameplay is pretty straightforward. It’s like an adventure game in that you mostly just move around the environment and interact with either characters or objects. However, it’s not like the typical adventure game where you have a plethora of items in your inventory to try out in different situations. You just have a pocket radio that, when tuned to the right frequency, can unlock doors, interact with objects, or tell you interesting little facts about the environment. It’s a neat little puzzle mechanic that makes the environment more engaging as you move from one location to another.

Even though the radio mechanics encourage exploration for the sake of finding secrets and anomalies, traversing through the environment is a slow and methodical experience, because you characters don’t run. This is fine, when you consider the fact that Oxenfree is a narrative-focused game. The developers clearly wanted you to go through all the dialogue options of an area before migrating to a new area and starting a new conversation. Likewise, there are certain areas that cannot be interacted with until particular narrative moments are experienced. This creates a bit of conflict in the design logic with the idea of exploration and can lead to some frustration if you’re trying to explore the environment but can’t, even though there is nothing really preventing you from doing so other than the arbitrary reason that you haven’t completed a specific plot point.

For example, after you first find out that you can use the radio to unlock doors that have a symbol next to them, your first instinct might be to go back to a cabin you saw earlier and get inside. Even if you return to this cabin and use the same method, nothing happens. There is nothing physically preventing you from opening this cabin’s door, and there’s nothing obvious about why it’s not working. However, if you continue through the story, you’ll be directed to return to the cabin which suddenly responds as it should, only because you progressed in the story. Yet, there are secrets to find throughout the game, and even more suddenly become available for discovery during the last act, encouraging you to backtrack explore the environments with the slow traversal of your aloof teenagers who can’t even jog.

The main point of the game is really just to have the characters speak to each other and to make dialogue choices. As Alex, you are often present with 2 or 3 different dialogue responses to select in the conversation. You can also just wait for the opportunity to pass and remain silent as your response. The active nature of the dialogue makes the story and its momentum have a natural pace. Since the characters have so much to say at all times, the slow movement of the characters throughout the environment never feels like a slog until the last act when you’re supposed to backtracking and looking for secrets. What you end up choosing in the conversations with the different characters during moments in the story and just over time can drastically alter the outcome of the story in the end.

Presentation

Oxenfree is no technical powerhouse when it comes to presentation, but it has a look, sound, and style that suits it just fine. The animated look of the characters fits the young-adult novel style of the story. There are some interesting tricks the game uses with lighting and particles to add a bit more atmosphere to the somewhat flat environments, as well.

The fully-voiced cast all do commendable jobs in their roles with convincing portrayals of their characters, even though they didn’t necessarily sound like teenagers. The music is a big highlight with the chillwave sound permeating the experience and adding to the dreamlike quality of Oxenfree’s look.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

Oxenfree is a neat, interesting little game that tries to tell a much bigger story than you’d expect. I’d say that it succeeds, for the most part. The option to explore the environments could and probably should have been left out, considering how slowly the characters move through the environment. The puzzles are not the most engaging or complicated. However, the story is an interesting one that is well-paced, and told through dialogue that feels active and engaging, thanks to the gameplay style and quality voice-acting. It’s a short game that’s easy to recommend if you’re looking for a story-driven, young-adult-adventure type of experience.