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.