You’re playing as a high-schooler, not Indiana Jones. This isn’t a mark against Oxenfree on the contrary, I think to change this would have felt forced and would have broken up the flow of the game. The few puzzles barely take a moment’s thought to solve, and the collectibles don’t make you go out of your way to find them. Oxenfree contains probably the most fluid, life-like conversations I’ve seen in a game yet, and it really made the game an immersive, engaging experience.īesides the dialogue that drives the fascinating story, there isn’t much there. This mechanic forced me to respond much more naturally to everything rather than deliberate at length over which dialogue choice was “best.” You also have the option to say nothing at all, which I thought was just as important. If you speak when someone else is still talking, you’ll cut them off. Just as in real life, you have to speak when it’s appropriate, and you can’t just wait an eternity to respond to something someone says. In Oxenfree, however, you must choose something to say in a timely manner or the option to add to the conversation will pass.
Usually in games where you have a dialogue tree with multiple choices of what to say, you can sit there for as long as you want debating the pros and cons of each one. My favorite aspect of the game was the main mechanic of the whole thing: the dialogue options. The way characters respond to stress and fear makes them seem like real people you might have known (or even been) in your high school and college years. Things get real spooky real quick, but Oxenfree never loses its sense of humor or adventure, despite everything going terribly, terribly wrong.
The game does an excellent job of capturing the wild and topsy-turvy feeling of those often turbulent teen years the whole island beach party seems like exactly the kind of poorly thought through adventure I myself would have taken part in. In this game from Night School Studio you play as sharp-witted, teenaged Alex, a blue-haired girl joining her friends for a forbidden overnight campout on an abandoned island.
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Whatever the heebie-jeebies are, I can say with certainty that Oxenfree is full of them. Or at least, that’s what I think they are. What are these heebie-jeebies, you say? The heebie-jeebies are the creeping, prickling sense of dread that starts in your spine and slowly works itself into your chest and throat. I like games that give me the heebie-jeebies.