Oxenfree Reviews
There's a haunting elegance to Oxenfree that's there because each of its constituent parts are working together to create it.
Oxenfree is a story about human interaction and how we choose to treat each other, all set against a backdrop of supernatural horror. It just feels really human in spite of all the weird stuff.
Oxenfree is a tight, well-paced thriller with characters that make you want to explore every inch of its creepy island.
Players that love a good story, some nice reveals, and lots of character driven dialog will eat up Oxenfree. It personally reminded me at times of Goonies, Donnie Darko, and X-files, all thrown in a blender together and spat out. It's a game with a great amount of heart, and one scene in particular, while it didn't have me in tears, I couldn't help feel touched by that moment.
Oxenfree is whole heartedly one of the best experiences you can have playing games. It is a cornerstone example of how stories can be told in an interactive media, and how to build a supernatural tone around 'average' characters without exaggerating everything.
So much of Oxenfree is an utterly heavenly experience. The conversation options knocks other games out of the water, and the characters are relatable and well-realised. The story is well-paced for much of the fairly brief play time, but sadly things unravel by the time the finale arrives, making a potential stone cold classic into something that's merely great.
With an enthralling mystery to solve while trying to survive a supernatural event, Oxenfree challenges you to solve a mystery, care about the characters, and make you want to play through the story again and again.
It may be brief, but Oxenfree has elements of greatness and stands out as an excellent example of video game storytelling. It's also a beautiful and intriguing game that draws you in from the very start and makes you want to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes. Unfortunately, the situational narrative is let down slightly in the final third where it confuses even itself and fails to merge with the far stronger and more prominent social narrative.
Oxenfree is everything that is right in the indie development scene. It tells a great story, has really unique gameplay that's almost completely dialog driven, and has some of the most subtle horror elements I've seen in a game. This is one of those games that you shouldn't sleep on, make sure you check it out.
Oxenfree deals with some heavy topics in just a few hours, and manages to do something genuinely interesting with them. A phenomenal conversation system anchors most of the experience, but there's many mysteries for dedicated players to solve. Oxenfree is a game that rewards players that go the extra mile, and how much you get out of it is directly tied to how much you put in.
Oxenfree is short, at around four-to-five hours, but like Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, it's the perfect length for what it is. It's not exactly challenging, and if you're stuck it's usually because you failed to spot something obvious – just check your notes or the helpful in-game map. That will be enough to write it off for a certain audience of gamers; the ones who don't think that games should be about the story or dismiss Gone Home and Everybody's Gone as 'walking simulators' (in which case you might label this a 'talking sim'). But if you're happy to get caught up in a rich, fascinating piece of interactive fiction, Oxenfree will keep you hooked throughout your first playthrough – and thinking through at least one more.
With a mystery that grows stranger and stronger the deeper you dive and characters that are instantly relatable, Night School Studio delivers a first effort that's spooky, sincere and enthralling.
Like a good roller coaster, Oxenfree starts with nervous laughter, escalating to an event that leaves the character white-knuckled and wishing they had stayed home.
Oxenfree is a gorgeous and artistic adventure game, which demands attention. It is, however, kept from greatness due to some unfortunate technical problems that can lead to a lot of frustration.
Players will remain invested in a story that, if not entirely original, remains exciting and poignant in equal measure.
In traditional adventure games, even if the experience amounts primarily to dialogue choices and walking through the story, the action is also punctuated with cutscenes. Oxenfree lacks this element, so a second playthrough to experiment with different choices will require a lot of slogging through the same wide-angle shots and simple interactions with the environment that I doubt would change the second time around.
Night School Studio has delivered a shining example of narrative excellence with Oxenfree. The story, the characters, the look, and the sound all come together to create an unforgettable series of wonderful moments.
Night School's creepy teen horror more than succeeds at being a chilling supernatural tale, but its real strength lies in its rough, earnest, truthful account of five teen lives and the ways that they grow and fracture under the worst, most unearthly kind of pressure.
Besides those two slight issues, Oxenfree is a compact, fresh experience that introduces lovable characters, a phenomenal soundtrack, and one of the no doubt dopest endings this year.