NobleGamer Oxenfree Review

I recommend this game to anyone up for a slower paced narrative rich game with mystery and horror elements. It took me less than 5 hours to reach the end of the story, and what stood out to me was that I wish Kentucky Route Zero had this significant or relatable of a story & narrative because they are both artistically crafted with atmosphere & rich narrative, but KRZ was a bit too abstract or too out there of a narrative for me to appreciate by the last chapter. In Oxenfree, the teenage characters were all mildly amusing and were natural in their dialog and mannerisms (including moments of social awkwardness), and if doesn't appeal to with you then there's interesting stories of the characters, island, its town, and people that were there. Here is what you need to know, spoiler free: -There are no in game audio controls. So there's no changing the levels of voices versus music versus SFX, and I can kind of get why when it comes to certain radio sounds/music or specific action triggered SFX, but it was annoying at the beginning of the game because the music felt heavy handed. It felt a bit better over time. -The game auto saves, there are no manual saves, and auto saves only happens when going to a different area that requires a loading screen - Except for the end-game, where there's no turning back. When entering end game area, I tried to quit 5 minutes in after 2 hours of gameplay, and when I reloaded the game it kicked me back to just before the end-game, and the end-game is at least 15 minutes long and may last as long as 30 in part depending on one of the first choices there. ?Choices matter to what happens to the characters in the epilogue, but it was hard for me to understand how much choices actually effect the game other than slightly different dialog or the sequence of events. ?I couldn't quite grasp whether most choices made in the end game were more important than earlier choices. So I don't know if they overrode earlier choices, or just happened to be more important or impactful than most earlier choices. +I appreciate how finding certain items in mid to late game were completely optional. +It appears that the game can be replayed, but with slightly different dialog, and you can also make different choices. ?Choices are more about the relationships between characters than they are whether or not your character did or did not do something specific, which makes this game different from other choices matter games. ?There are no individual chapters that can be skipped to or multiple save points, which I don't consider a bad thing since the game does a good job providing a variety of dialog choice that impact the characters. ?If you say something that matters to another character that may influence a choice, then the character's face will appear in a bubble over another character's head.