I continue in my quest to play every game Josh Sawyer cited as inspiration for Pentiment. Oxenfree definitely knows what it's trying to do, its a sort of teen coming of age story with a paranormal twist, like Stand By Me got made into an episode of X-Files.

In general I think its... fine? I enjoyed my time with it well enough, the music was good and the character dialogue was good for what its was trying to be? I.e American teenager movie dialogue. Its sits more on the VN side of the adventure game spectrum, the puzzles are mostly just "find the right radio frequency" but the dialogue choices are oddly timed, sometimes characters will interrupt each other in unnatural ways and whilst the slow walking speed is clearly meant as a pacing tool, this seemingly did not account for a few instances in which your companion will basically say nothing at all until you hit the predetermined checkpoint.

I think Pentiment had the right idea in making your choices influence the outcome of dice rolls, the combination of RPG and adventure game really does mesh well but here the dialogue choices seem kind of... opaque? Like I was really not sure if I was meant to be gaming the outcomes or choosing naturally but the ending was kind of a mess for this aspect. The "negative" outcomes felt undeserved and the "positive" ones unearned.

I guess I liked it more than Night In The Woods, mainly cause of the faster pace and more sympathetic characters, and at least had the decency to be brief.

There are two types of games (and movies, books, etc) in this world, not good or bad but games which I will remember and games which I will have forgotten about in a week's time. And I guess the harshest thing I can say about Oxenfree is whilst fine, I will definitely forget about it sooner than most.

Oxenfree has been in my backlog for years now, but I always put off playing it for some reason or another. After hearing that the sequel is coming next month, I figured I should finally cross this off my list.

In Oxenfree you control Alex, a teenage girl, who takes a ferry to an island to party with a few of her friends. While you're there you accidentally open a rift in time, or something along those lines, and you have to work together to figure out how to fix it.

The game plays as a walking simulator game of sorts. You walk around the island and try to solve the mystery that has transpired around you. Aside from walking around, the main gameplay element is selecting Alex's dialogue choices from 2-3 speech options that appear above her head.

This gameplay style worked well enough for a narrative game like this, but I had one huge annoyance with how the conversations were handled in Oxenfree. As conversations are going on you are given just a few seconds to make your selection. This would be a completely fine way of doing things, but the game just doesn't give you enough time to respond (ideally you could have until the end of the dialogue being spoken), but for some reason your dialogue options almost always disappear before the previous conversation ends. Because of this you are forced to make your selection before the current dialogue finishes, causing Alex to interrupt the previous line of dialogue (and in turn potentially missing out on key information). Another annoyance caused by this system is that if you decide not to respond (or fail to select an option in the time limit) Alex will stay silent and not contribute to the conversation, often changing how things play out (for example, I didn't reply quick enough and was forced to proceed to a new area with a different character, which in turn started an argument between the group). These annoyances didn't ruin the game for me, but they certainly made it feel less immersive.

My other main annoyance with the game was the incredibly long load times. The game has a simple 2D-ish art style which didn't seem like it should be too taxing on the Switch, but it honestly took longer to load into a new area in in this game than it takes to load into BOTW or TOTK. I couldn't believe it!

One thing to note, after finishing the game for the first time you unlock New Game+, and a playthough of New Game+ is required if you want to see the true ending. The two playthroughs are essentially the same, but there are a few new scenes and some new dialogue options as well.

I had a mostly good time with Oxenfree, but the game wasn't without its flaws. I enjoyed the overall story and the interactions between Alex and her friends, but the long load times, the time limit to select dialogue choices, and the constant dialogue interruptions ruined the immersion and left me feeling a bit disappointed with the game as a whole.

Slow-paced and atmospheric adventure game with some horror elements and some teenage melodrama to boot. What's not to like?

The most noticeable thing about Oxenfree right off the bat is its perspective, with the camera set way back from the characters. This is to let the environments really shine and sometimes the game and sometimes it feels like you're traversing through concept art which is really effective.

The writing is pretty good here with decent branching dialogue even if the characters can be annoying at times. The gameplay however is too shallow as the main thing you'll be doing is spinning a radio dial to reach certain frequencies required to progress the story. The visual and sound effects to go along with the mechanics are nice and spooky but there definitely should've been more to this.

Oxenfree definitely drags a bit too but it has a nice atmosphere overall and it feels ripe for a sequel that expands on its better ideas (which is fortunately on the way). I played this on iOS first and then PS4 for my second playthrough and it works well either way. You can play it for free on your phone if you have Netflix.

Like any short indie, I just wanted more! It's a chill mystery coated in a retrowave mist. What it does well, it does really well. I haven't played many games in my short existence, but I'm finding it difficult to compare it to anything. The vibe, the mystery, the -whatthehelljusthappened-. This one is for the sci-fi story buffs; it's a slow burn. Set Oxenfree aside for a rainy weekend and you're golden.

There's replayability here so will dive into that when I'm feeling it! (Thanks for the rec. FallenGrace!)

I had no clue what this game would be like.
After a good price on sale I gave it a try.
It has not much gameplay, it's more like a walking simulator. The plot of the story wasn't amazing too, but this game had something.
I guess I liked the conversations. They talked naturally to another and mostly talked about things teenagers are talking about.
The playtime was not to long too.
So it was a nice little experience.

Theres something really special about this game. Hard to point to one thing but its sort of a shame it never really got super popular or anything. Its in that wonky ass limbo state where its not quite completely unknown but like 80% of people are going to ask you what an oxenfree is. Anyways play it.

If you wanna know anything about this game: its best to go in blind but all you really need to know is its a supernatural character based story. Reministant in ways to games like Detroit become human or whatever but betterer

Oxenfree is an incredibly mixed bag.

The game starts and immediately almost the entire cast is unlikeable. The way they speak is so inhuman in an attempt to create witty banter, but it just comes across as unnatural and forced.

Then the portal in the cave opens and the game becomes really good for a couple hours. Characters stop being robots and are allowed to be humans for a change (Especially Jonas and Alex improve here). Good mystery too and an effectively eerie atmosphere is created.

Then the last few hours of the plot kick in and the more you learn the less interesting and convoluted it becomes. It is at this point that you really start to feel the lack of gameplay (especially as you are made to walk further and further to continue each chapter).

Not to the mention that sometimes dialogue options will fade away before characters have finished speaking meaning you'll have to guess what direction the conversation is going in and/or miss out on information. This can also lead to choosing options which make your character say things you didn't want them to say out of lack of time to properly read the dialogue options.

The ending also confused me when it told me how I made up with Clarissa when I couldn't tell you what I did to warrant this ending; though this is but a minor nitpick compared the previously stated concerns.

In conclusion: Oxenfree has a few glaring issues preventing it from being a great game: The (lack of) gameplay, the characters having unnatural conversations and the story becoming more convoluted and uninteresting the longer it went on. The middle chunk of this game is fantastic, but it does not carry that momentum with it until the end.

An enrapturing thriller mystery about strange supernatural entities, radio frequencies and getting lost on an ex-military base island.

The game's aesthetics go hand in hand with the setting and the atmosphere, I felt very immersed in the flow of the story and the characters for the most part.
The art style is beautiful, with its toned colour palette and gentle lineart for the character art. The ambient music, or sometimes lack thereof, does a lot to set the tone of the setting and the situations.

It helps that the character dialogue is written in a way that feels natural and at many points, it feels realistic, so they are rather relatable and feel like actual people.
In the game, you are given dialogue trees, where you have options for how you want the conversation to play out.
My one complaint is that sometimes choosing an option cancels out/cuts off the currently playing dialogue or fades away too fast for the player to both process and have time to choose which option they want.
The dialogue also sometimes cuts off when approaching a location or when trying to interact with something else, so if you want to hear the rest of the dialogue, you sometimes have to stand around and wait for it to end.

The gameplay extends to simply moving the character around and choosing dialogue options or checking items, so it should be taken into account that the story being communicated is more important than gameplay variety.
The one interesting mechanic that Oxenfree puts forward is tuning a radio for different frequencies that you can use to reveal hidden lore or to solve puzzles, and sometimes do other things.
I thought personally that this was a really clever mechanic included in the game, and certainly spiced up the gameplay side of things.

The thing about Oxenfree; it has spooky moments, but it never fully leaps to true horror, so it is perfect if you like getting spooked, but don't tolerate horror games very well.
I enjoyed the thriller aspect to the story and the whole mystery behind it, even though I didn't fully understand everything that happened in the ending.

Oxenfree is a great narrative-first game, so as long as you keep that in mind, you are in for a good time.

I love slow paced games, but the loading screen times and the walking speeds were slow enough to break my immersion. I also don't enjoy the way they suddenly show you the map when something new happens!

Overall it's an interesting enough story with enjoyable music and a really chill, creepy, and unique vibe. ...The vibe is mostly what kept me playing. It didn't hit any emotional notes for me, however I'll definitely pick up the second one whenever it goes on sale as I'm also curious how they'll expand on the usage of radios in gameplay.