Reviews

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Game Specific stats:
Playtime to completion: 3H
Ending: 3/5
Gimmick: 3/5
Difficulty: 1/5
How scary is this: 2/5
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Okey, before we start going over the list of positives and negatives, it needs to be made clear that I feel like most issues I will discuss are technical in nature, and I would not know a better way to solve them either. Also, I like the game for what it is, I just do not think it is good enough for a recommended tag.

If this game appeals to you, do give it a try. It is worth it!

Normally, I would put bullet points on positives and negatives, but Oxenfree is a game that takes one gimmick and uses it all the way. This means I would only have one or two positives and a row of complains. Instead, I will go over it using "more text" ;)

Talking in Oxenfree:
This is the main gimmick of the game. You will get information from other characters by talking to them and giving different responses. This means that Oxenfree is very replayable, as with each replay you can give different answers and get completely different responses!
When talking to the NPC's I often felt that we actually had a discussion, and while the characters in the story are extremely one dimensional, I still managed to get attached to at least one character. (More on that in a bit).

Talking also had a few downsides;
Sometimes, I had issues with executing the following steps fast enough:
1) Read all possible answers
2) Imagine what my character is actually going to say when I click that button
3) I'm too late, now I have said "Nothing" instead. (The npc's actually consider this an answer as well)

Additionally, it was unclear if my response would be executed right away or at the end of their sentence, leading to many unintended interruptions of my character. I would have personally preferred if the system would wait a moment and then include my response.

The radio:
Cool gimmick, but really under-used. You use it near info area's to get information about the island, and near the "bad guy" area's. This is not enough, and often I felt as if I should have kept the radio out at all times to find hidden gems. This proved to be useless.

Small nitpicks:
Before I enter spoiler territory, I wanted to put down some nitpicks that might turn you away from this game.
A) Walking is a pain in this game. Aaaand, its a walking sim. You can get stuck in terrain, its hard to properly direct where you want to go. Moving up and down had me hit the edge of the collision box more often than not.
B) There are trails in this game that I failed even though I knew the answer because my character was not fast enough to walk to the correct place to stand.
 - yes, you heard that right. You can fail this game's trivia just because your movement speed is so darn low.
C) Its almost impossible to make your characters stop talking, and this is AWESOME. If any of the devs read this, this is super cool! But... when there are long dialogue trees I often accidentally interrupted the NPC's, left the area (which cancels the npc's dialog) or stood near an interactive space with my radio (both will then talk at the same time.. great)

Now, the last part that is really important in Oxenfree is the story.
If you have read the above parts and think to yourself; "Well, that's okey, as long as the story is compelling". Then, I would highly advise you to run away now and come back to the next part of the review once you have completed the game.

Alright, everyone gone? Good!
Overall, the story is well written and entertaining. It offers multiple paths and in the end you get a nice list of "choices you have made compared to other players". There is also some cool gaming meta stuff going on!

The problem I ran into however, is that there is this moment were the bad guys ask me; "Can we just kill one of your friends, and then leave the rest of you? You dont like her anyway!"
And to be fair; I didnt like her. I did not like her at all! She managed to be annoying to me the whole game up to this point. So I just said yes and won the game.

Now, its cool that I have an option like that. But the problem is that the game then gives me another option near the end and "safe everyone". No consequences at all. Just "Hey, wanna get everyone free?".
So I did. I got everyone to escape. This made me feel pretty bad. I really wanted the game to just stick to the consequences presented earlier in the story.
Additionally, the story in Oxenfree is quite vague. This certainly did not help me enjoy the ending.

Overall, I would recommend Oxenfree to anyone interested in just engaging with the story. Its not fantastic or mind blowing, but it certainly is entertaining enough.

Also, I really liked Nona. I took her with me and dished all the boys. Take that crappy punks! ;)