Oxenfree was released in 2016 as the debut game of Night School Studio as their debut game. Its name comes from a phrase that children shout, or used to shout—I’m told by my younger sister that this is no longer “a thing” with the kids these days—after a game of hide and seek/capture the flag/sardines/etc. A group shout of “olly-olly-oxenfree” signals that the round has ended, that it’s time for the teams to switch sides and restart. In the game Oxenfree, however, this silly phrase takes on a more sinister meaning—Oxenfree is, after all, a pretty unsettling game. I hesitate to outright categorize it as a horror game—there are no overtly disturbing monsters, no jumpscares, and in fact very little action-based gameplay. Instead, the game utilizes a combination of eerie music, surreal watercolor art, and a complex dialogue system in order to combine a supernatural mystery with a coming-of-age story that—if you haven’t played it already—I highly recommend. Besides the fact that it’s just an immersive and fun game, on a meta level Oxenfree is successful because it manages to integrate story and gameplay elements to create replay value and encourage the player to play it multiple times. And it does a good job.
(This review does contain pretty extensive spoilers for the game, which incidentally is only a couple bucks on the App Store and also has a PC version, so if you’re looking for something new to play…)
THE STORY
In order to discuss Oxenfree, we’ll have to first talk pretty extensively about the game’s plot. Alex, a teenage girl still recovering from the tragic death of her brother, heads to Edwards Island to bum around on the beach with her friends Ren and Nona. This situation is made somewhat awkward by: 1) the presence of her new stepbrother Jonas, who Alex met hours ago, 2) the presence of Nona’s friend Clarissa, who used to date Alex’s deceased brother, 3) the presence of eerie supernatural events that occur when Alex uses her old handheld radio. While exploring a cave, Alex’s radio accidentally taps into a dimensional rift and unleashes a wave of angry spirits—ghosts who died in a submarine accident and were trapped in a hellish limbo, forced to relive their deaths over and over in a time loop. The four teenagers are stuck on the island and must navigate a night full of supernatural events and time loops. The game has multiple endings, but one thing stays constant throughout all of them—Alex makes it off Edwards Island and in an epilogue voiceover, seems to neatly conclude the game. Then the static kicks in, the narration changes to Alex’s monologue from the beginning of the game, and the title suddenly makes sense. It’s olly-olly-oxenfree—the game resets, everything starts over. The characters are still stuck in a time loop.
Oxenfree’s narrative and time loop mechanic is tied pretty heavily into the game’s design and how it creates replay value. We’ll go into greater detail about this later.
COLOR, AESTHETIC, AND ATMOSPHERE
Any review of Oxenfree would be incomplete without a mention of the game’s unique artwork, an almost watercolor-like style that is oddly eerie and sinister. The color palette of the background art is full of murky greens and browns, reminding the viewer of an old, faded color photo. This contrasts starkly with the intermittent but jarring appearances of neon red, used to foreshadow the presence of malevolent spirits. This usage of the color red as a shorthand for danger, or a “red alert” is almost universally understood. Often the presence of red lighting is a hint for Alex to turn on her radio and investigate carefully, and the universal meaning of the color red as well as its contrast with the background means that the player picks up this mechanic very easily. The use of muted colors for the background also means that Alex—clad in a red jacket and sporting a bright blue hairstyle— stands out vividly against the dark, murky artwork.
The color scheme utilized so effectively in Oxenfree also possibly reminds the viewer of a specific historical aesthetic—namely, like we discussed in class, the color palette of Bioshock (or to step outside games for a second, also seen in Guillermo Del Toro’s film The Shape of Water). This subdued palette calls back to the 50’s, bringing associations of war, tension and new/dangerous science. This historical lens is also somewhat relevant to Oxenfree, as the angry spirits that feature as the game’s antagonists are the ghosts of sailors who died in a submarine accident involving nuclear material, around the time of WWII. Many other aspects of the game’s aesthetic also reference this historical period—from Alex’s old radio, to the presence of cassette tapes used to rewind time, to clues that are given in the Phonetic Alphabet used in military communications. The repeated usage of this aesthetic almost creates a feeling that Alex and her friends are trapped in a different time, which fits into the theme of the game and the concept of the time loop.
GAMEPLAY AND DIALOGUE
Despite a plot that would not seem out of place in the survival horror genre, the actual gameplay of Oxenfree is simple and quite slow. The player controls Alex and is limited to examining objects and walking around. Alex moves at one speed and automatically climbs/jumps over obstacles, making movement in the game about as simple as it can get. There is no running away from monsters, no items to find and pick up—the only thing that Alex actually uses through the game is an old radio, which she tunes in order to explore temporal anomalies. Alex also spends the entire game accompanied by at least one other character, meaning she must wait for them to catch up if she moves too quickly. This design choice, though it may seem boring at first, actually is quite conducive to completing the game—the slow stretches encourage the idle player to examine parts of their environment or fiddle with the radio, potentially stumbling across useful information.
This lack of fast-paced action is admittedly somewhat of a drag at first, but walking from point A to point B never gets too boring thanks to the main focus of the gameplay—a stellar dialogue system with full voice acting. As the characters walk along they chat with Alex, who can build or harm her relationship with them by selecting certain responses. The things that Alex chooses to say, or not to say, are pretty much the only way that she can influence the outcome of the game. Otherwise player control is fairly limited. On a more meta level, we can see that this deliberate choice to limit player agency actually gives a sense of greater immersion and makes the situation feel more real. Alex and her friends are teenagers on a haunted island being manipulated by forces beyond their comprehension; they are helpless. It would seem almost contrived if the player had all the controls of a survival horror game. Instead, the game limits the player to walking and talking, unable to even sprint, inducing a feeling of anxiety and vulnerability that is far more effective than creating suspense than any jumpscare.
An unique attribute of Oxenfree’s dialogue system, as opposed to other similar systems like that of the Telltale games, is how real the conversations feel. If Alex does not select a dialogue option, instead of awkwardly waiting ten seconds for a response and repeating a cue (as is the case in other games) the other character rambles to fill the silence for a little while. If Alex selects an option too quickly, she interrupts the other character and talks over them. Occasionally, the interrupted character may even irritatedly reference the fact that they were cut off before continuing. This may seem like a tiny detail, but imitating the natural flow of a real-life conversation in this way makes the characters seem more real. They feel and talk like real teenagers, stammering, stumbling, interrupting each other. The level of detail in the dialogue trees also contributes to this feeling. Multiple times, I was surprised when a character mentioned something I had offhandedly said hours ago—it really does feel like having a real conversation with a group of real people. And there’s a lot of conversation—most of the game time consists of talking to the cast. The effect of this is that the player has to spend a lot of time with the cast and ends up feeling pretty strongly about them, caring about what happens to them. This only compounds the effectiveness of the time loop ending. Seeing these fleshed-out, realistic characters trapped on a nightmare island evokes an almost personal level of frustration. It makes the player demand a do-over, a rerun to change Alex’s fate. From a game design perspective, this decision to focus so much on fleshing out the cast and encouraging the player to form an emotional connection is one factor that incentivizes multiple replays of the game.
TIME LOOPS, NEWGAME+, AND COMPLETIONISM
Oxenfree is designed to be completed multiple times, with several aspects of its features encouraging multiple playthroughs. Of course, the most obvious clue is the nature of the plot and its ending; after Alex and her friends are shunted back to the beginning of the story, the player is given two options: “NEW GAME” and “CONTINUE TIMELINE.” The curious player who chooses the second option enters New Game+ mode, where events on the island differ slightly from the first playthrough. Dialogue changes slightly, whole stretches of exposition are gone, and characters mention feeling a sense of deja vu. Sudden crackles of static and pixelated flashes of red startle the player who expects things to happen exactly the same way. These differences appear almost immediately, telling the player that replaying the game has additional value, encouraging them to keep going. As the player progresses, they can discover items that reveal more of Edwards Island’s history, complicating the game’s story and possibly unlocking a new ending.
The core of Oxenfree’s success in creating replay value lies in an integration of plot points and the concept of replaying a game. Because of how heavily the narrative of the game relies on the concept of a time loop, replaying the game feels logical. In a story about time loops, it makes sense for a player to restart the game and go through it all again—from the perspective of the characters, the ‘“New Game” option is the ultimate time loop. So replaying the game is justified—encouraged, even, and players who are more attached to Alex may see it as a challenge to free the cast from the Groundhog Day scenario they are trapped in. Further incentives to spend more time on the game are found in letters hidden around the island, containing information that unlocks new backstory and new options in the game’s climax. The dialogue system also provides an incentive to play through the game multiple times, as what Alex chooses to say changes her relationship with each character which has significant influence on the game’s ending. Searching for clues and carefully choosing the correct responses leads the hardworking player to their prize—another ending, only available after multiple playthroughs, that brings the cast out of the time loop and ends the timeline for good.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Oxenfree is a thoughtfully designed game whose narrative permeates all levels of its design, from its gameplay to its aesthetic to how it creates replay value through both the mechanics of its dialogue system and its well-characterized cast. The art style creates a great sense of atmosphere which the sound design builds upon. It’s easy to get really attached to the characters and immersed in the game, which is always eerie and slightly tense but never goes for the cheap jumpscare.
For a brief time, there was an ARG hosted by the developers where players found letters, sent from Alex, all with some variant of: “Do not come to Edwards Island. It is not safe.” Still, I really do recommend that if you got to the end of this review, that you take the time to play through Oxenfree and spend some time on Edwards Island and the chilling, immersive story that the game has told.
I reviewed Oxenfree too! I really liked your analysis of the art in Oxenfree, especially how the color scheme reminds you of the 1950s, so it feels like the characters are trapped in that time. Which they kind of are, in a way. When I was reading about the game art, I thought it was interesting how they wanted to contrast the very organic and natural colors and designs of the background with the very brightly colored and geometric designs of anything relating to the “ghosts” in the game.