![]() ![]() ![]() This could have been easily remedied a couple of different ways, so I’m not sure as to why the designers decided to leave such an obvious flaw in the finished version of the game. Sometimes I got it right, but mostly, I ended up with a whole bunch of confusing, chopped up conversation lines. What this resulted in for me, was often times a mad dash to try click an option before they disappeared and roughly around my best guess of when the other characters were about to finish speaking. The problem is, you only have a limited amount of time to pick an option before they disappear and she just says nothing, but if you choose an option too early, Alex will interrupt what the other character is saying, cutting his dialogue line short, to start a new stage in the conversation. When characters are conversing with each other, we are presented with several options on how to continue the conversation through multi-colored speech bubbles floating above Alex’s head. What I mean by that all falls down to the games’ mechanics and how they don’t quite work as well as they could. What I found during my play through was that it is way too easy to skip past this dazzling dialogue. Unfortunately, with the games’ biggest plus, also comes its biggest critique in my opinion. The dialogue is quirky, funny and for the most half engaging, and Himes has done a great job at unpacking character backstory not through chunk exposition monologues, but rather through casual conversation, with details being more hinted at than explicitly explained. There’s no wooden language here.Īnd unlike other games that have attempted to go for an indie coming-of-age plot *cough* Life Is Strange *cough*, Oxenfree manages to steer clear of feeling as if the writers were middle-aged parents, glancing through Tumblr, trying to get an understanding of “how the kids speak nowadays”. Every character in the game is voice acted, and voice acted rather well. Video games aren’t particularly well known for their stories or for their character development, but Oxenfreehas this in spades.īecause the game play almost exclusively consists of characters exploring the island together, walking around and occasionally solving some sort of puzzle, the dialogue is key to stopping the lack of action becoming a negative in the players mind. It isn’t very often that you get an adventure or horror game with such brilliant dialogue. I would term it a flawed masterpiece as there are a few issues I have, but whatever issues there are, they most of the time, tend to be dwarfed in comparison with the good that this game offers up.įirst off, let’s deal with the games’ greatest asset: The Dialogue. Oxenfree is quite honestly a pretty amazing game. ![]() The teenagers find themselves forced into a journey of discovery, both of the mysteries behind the island, as well as the mysteries behind their own lives. As the gang attempts to regroup and figure out what the hell just happened, more strange events begin to occur – possessions, ground-hog day time slips, glowing lights and talking reflections to name a few. Of course, what follows is a hard and fast descent into the uncanny, when Alex, operating an old radio opens up a kind of portal, zapping the three along with other party goers to random locations around the island. Their plan? Get a bonfire going, start drinking, enjoy the starry night sky, and maybe check out the Island’s caves where it is rumored bizarre and ghostly recordings can be picked up as radio frequencies. The plot follows a teenage girl named Alex, who alongside her stoner best friend Ren and her new stepbrother Jonas, arrives on Edwards Island for a night of High School debauchery – a rite of passage indulged in by their towns youth. Oxenfree uses the gorgeous artwork of Heather Gross to weave together a story of science fiction and weird horror to a near masterful effect. Written by Adam Himes – the man responsible for Telltale Games’ Tales From The Borderlands. It functions as both a tribute to 80s family friendly horror as well as a beautifully written coming-of-age story. Oxenfree is a (kind of) side scrolling adventure game with a supernatural/horror twist. Put it this way, if you are looking for a game to play this Halloween AND something to scratch that 80s horror itch Stranger Things left behind, then you need to check out Oxenfree.
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