Oxenfree

The five teenagers Alex (voiced by Erin Yvette ), Jonas ( Gavin Hammon ), Nona ( Britanni Johnson ), Clarissa ( Avital Ash ) and Ren ( Aaron Kubin ) meet at night on a deserted island to celebrate. Rumor has it that there is a place in a small cave near the beach where one can receive supernatural frequencies with the help of a pocket radio. Alex and her stepbrother Jonas find one of these places and use the radio to open a portal. Both go through a vision and wake up with a film tear in a former radio tower. There they receive an emergency call from Clarissa, who is in a former army base, as well as from Ren, who woke up in a forest.

Depending on the player's decision, it will be decided who should be saved first.

If you choose Ren, you first come to a hut where a song that Jonas knows very well is played before the street lights are switched on. During the ride on the cable car, Alex and Jonas talk about Alex's deceased brother Michael. On the other side of the gorge, both of them find themselves in a "time loop" in which the action repeats itself over and over again until Alex breaks the time loop with the help of a magnetophone . They meet Nona, who claims to have seen alternative versions of Alex and Jonas and therefore does not trust them. Alex sends her back to the radio tower to find a way out together. A little later they find Ren, but get back into a time warp in which Ren shows strange behavior that is reminiscent of an obsession. Ren can only be freed by opening a second portal. While Alex and Jonas are walking towards the base, Ren goes to the radio tower.

If you choose Clarissa, after activating a light you can reach the fort via a certain radio frequency, in which, according to a radio voice, “a game is being played”. In the fort, Jonas becomes possessed by a ghost, while Alex has to answer a few questions through which the player learns that the ghosts are former passengers of a submarine who were trapped in an alternate dimension when the reactor explodes. By opening a third portal, Jonas is released again, both find Clarissa in a time loop, initially hanged, jumping to her death and finally disappearing.

The four remaining characters meet at the radio tower, where a dispute breaks out about how to proceed. Alex sets out with a character of her choice to find a key to one of the last inhabited houses, which turns out to be a radio with a wider frequency range. They also find one of 13 hidden letters from the island's last deceased resident. You'll also find Clarissa sitting on a lantern. In a leap in time, the entire group finds itself on the beach, where Clarissa blames Alex for her brother's death. When the time warp is broken, Alex finds herself in the office room she was in shortly before Clarissa was found. On the way back to the tower, Alex gets back into a time warp in which she finds herself with her brother Michael and his girlfriend Clarissa at the time. Without being able to control it, she gets back into real playing time.

Reunited with the group, they all make their way to the house of the last inhabitant of the island, where they find Clarissa. Like Ren, she is obsessed with her, she tests Alex in a kind of hide-and-seek, which she masters. Clarissa disappears again. The group finds out that the problem can only be solved if they find their way back to the cave in which the story began via an old bunker. On the way to the opening of the bunker, Alex and her companion Jonas get into a time loop again, in which they repeatedly see different types of Ren's death, until this Nona, who stayed with him, can comfort him, which breaks the time loop. In front of the bunker, Alex and Jonas decide that they want to enter the bunker without Ren and Nona.

In the bunker they both discover a magnetophone playing the favorite song of Jonas' deceased mother, whereupon it suddenly disappears. Alex must now try to defeat the ghosts on his own. When Alex creates another portal, she finds herself at the bottom of the sea, seeing the sunken submarine in the background. The obsessed Clarissa explains there that closing all portals on the island will ensure that Alex is killed and the time is repeated indefinitely, but that Alex can continue to live with her friends if she sacrifices Clarissa. Depending on how Alex decides, the game ends differently.

epilogue

In the epilogue, the ending is decided based on the decisions made by the player. The player can influence the following things:

Clarissa's friendship with Alex and Michael can either be destroyed or preserved. If Clarissa is sacrificed, all memory of her disappears, only Alex can remember her.
Ren may or may not have a date with Nona, he'll definitely be leaving town to go to college.
Nona goes to ballet school, like Ren, she will either date him or not.
Jonas' relationship with his stepsister Alex can either be cemented or destroyed.
Michael can come back to life by solving a few puzzles and after repeating a few time loops. When this happens, he replaces Jonas in the following loops, Jonas and Alex are no longer step-siblings. The player can either keep or destroy the relationship with Clarissa.

Depending on how the player decides, the future can be determined by Alex. This decision seems to be invalid, however, because after the picture flickers, Alex no longer speaks of her future plans, but of her plan to go to Edwards Island with her (step-) brother and Ren. So an infinite time loop seems to be active. In an advanced playthrough, there is the possibility of breaking the plans for the night on the island before boarding the ferry, which leads to the end of the time warp.

Game principle and technology

The game is played in a 2.5D perspective. The focus of the game is on the protagonist Alex. Essential gameplay elements are the reaction to dialogues between the characters and a pocket radio with which the player can contact anomalies and open gates.

Production notes

Employee of Night School Studio at the Independent Games Festival 2016 (Adam Hines, Heather Gross and Sean Krankel)

Night School Studio members Adam Hines, Heather Gross, and Sean Krankel at the 2016 Independent Games Festival The music that makes up an essential part of the atmosphere of the game was composed by Andrew Rohrmann, aka scntfc , who was also responsible for the sound design. The soundtrack was released in line with the game's release on January 15, 2016.

role	speaker
Alex	Erin Yvette
Jonas	Gavin Hammon
Ren	Aaron Kuban
Clarissa	Avital Ash
Nona	Britanni Johnson
Michael	Anthony Lam
Tour guide	Joe Zieja
ghost	Bryant Cannon
ghost	Andrew Rohrmann
ghost	Heather Gross
ghost	Adam Hines
ghost	Kevin Riach
ghost	Sean Krankel

reception

Oxenfree received largely positive feedback from critics. The PC version achieved an aggregate rating of 80 at Metacritic , based on 49 reviews.

The game is part of the “Indiecade Official Selection 2015” and won the “Excellence in Visual Art” category at the Independent Games Festival 2016 and received an award from the “Seumas McNally Grand Prize” as well as for “Excellence in Narrative” and “Excellence in Audio". It was also nominated for the 20th annual DICE Awards in the Outstanding Achievement in Story category.

Web links

Official website (English)
Oxenfree at MobyGames (English)

Individual evidence

↑ Sascha Penzhorn: Oxenfree in the test - horribly well told. In: GameStar . Webedia , January 19, 2016, accessed June 15, 2018 .
^ Bryant Francis: Road to the IGF: Night School Studio's Oxenfree. In: Gamasutra . UBM plc , February 4, 2016, accessed June 15, 2018 .
↑ Oxenfree for PC reviews. In: Metacritic . CBS Interactive Inc. , accessed June 15, 2018 .
↑ Jonathon Dornbush: IGF Awards 2016 winners include Her Story, Oxenfree, Cibele. In: Entertainment Weekly . Meredith Corporation , March 17, 2016, accessed June 15, 2018 .
↑ 2016 - Independent Games Festival Winners. In: igf.com. UBM plc , March 2016, accessed June 15, 2018 .
↑ DICE Awards By Video Game Details. Oxenfree. In: interactive.org. Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences , 2017, accessed June 15, 2018 .

[1] Sascha Penzhorn: Oxenfree in the test - horribly well told. In: GameStar . Webedia , January 19, 2016, accessed June 15, 2018 .

[2] Bryant Francis: Road to the IGF: Night School Studio's Oxenfree. In: Gamasutra . UBM plc , February 4, 2016, accessed June 15, 2018 .

[3] Oxenfree for PC reviews. In: Metacritic . CBS Interactive Inc. , accessed June 15, 2018 .

[4] Jonathon Dornbush: IGF Awards 2016 winners include Her Story, Oxenfree, Cibele. In: Entertainment Weekly . Meredith Corporation , March 17, 2016, accessed June 15, 2018 .

[5] 2016 - Independent Games Festival Winners. In: igf.com. UBM plc , March 2016, accessed June 15, 2018 .

[6] DICE Awards By Video Game Details. Oxenfree. In: interactive.org. Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences , 2017, accessed June 15, 2018 .