I still have some games I haven't touch in a while and yet I'm still looking for other games, put them in a reminder and made a post about them. Oxenfree is one of those games, and I have finished it already recently. Have you ever heard of that one before? It's not really a groundbreaking title, but it was an experience totally worth to write an article about. But this is not a review, really.
Spoiler Alert!
Adventure genre is not my favourite, among some of other genres too. But I wouldn't label it as "not my cup of tea" either, because with some exception(s) I'd still play games of any genre. The first time I saw Oxenfree, I thought the art style was quite eye catching, but that wasn't enough to convince me to play--until.. I saw a time loop happening in the trailer. That's Oxenfree's exception that took my interest in an instant, its storyline that involves time loop/time travel stuff, which is my favourite thing in all works of fiction. This one is a bit hard to understand, but that's what makes me like it even more. If you're interested in playing and don't want further spoiler, that was all you need to know about the game.
Change the Past Through the Future
The story is centered around Alex, a highschool girl who is off to the beach in an old military island called Edwards Island for highschool overnight party with her chatty best friend Ren, and her nervous new step-brother Jonas. Everything gone wrong when Alex unknowingly open a tear to alternate dimension (dimension, not timeline) where the long sunken US' submarine crew are trapped.
On the surface, it may seems like your average horror movie starring teenagers in a party gone wrong. But Oxenfree is way more than that.
Ren shows Alex and Jonas a strange anomaly in the mouth of a cave on the beach that happens when Alex tune the radio to certain frequencies in certain spots. Using a small radio is one of the main part of the gameplay. Technically that's what starts, started, will start the event of the game. Driven by curiosity, Jonas go further into the cave. Alex follow him and find a rift ready to be triggered once again to fully open.
We are dealing with ghosts in this game, but the game only goes as far as "unsettling", not actually scary because this is not a horror game. The ghosts will occasionally posses Alex's friends to communicate, telling about their past, and how the player will never succeed in closing the rift. That's how everything is told pieces by pieces, by finding secrets and conversing. The characters' background, the island's history, everything.
Conversation, the dialogue, is also the main ingredient of Oxenfree. That is one thing that you will have the most in Oxenfree. The way I see it, the gameplay mechanic is trying to give you the experience of real life conversation. It succeeded thanks to the splendid performance of talented voice actors from well known titles such as Borderlands series and The Wolf Among Us that delivers natural voice acting that is not only make all the dialogue far from being bland, but also make the player to be more involved and want to be involved. Respond first, then click. That's what the game want you to do; to respond with your answer, the thought you have in mind, then see if it's available in the dialogue option. Not the other way around.
Nobody will stand there and stare at you for hours waiting for your response before they proceed to their next line. That's what Oxenfree do. The conversation between everyone will proceed seamlessly with or without you joining it and the story will also keep going.
However, all this splendid work is not without its flaw. But it's caused by neither the voice acting nor the dialogue line. It's because of how the game decide when the player will speak.
You will converse throughout 95% of the game, and you need to be ready to click on the dialogue option because it will come at any point and will fade out quite quickly depends on the situations. The problem is.. at some points in the game, the player would interrupt other characters's dialogue in unnatural manner. Like the sound of immediately paused music player, not immediately stopped person (from talking). Ugh, I can't describe this right.
Changed the Past Through the Future
Here's the story...
One more key character in Oxenfree is a recently died woman named Maggie Adler who worked on the island's watch tower long ago when it was still an active military installation. One day on her duty, she received a distress signal from the submarine USS Kanaloa, but the signal was cut off. Maggie misinterpreted the garbled transmission as an attempt to jam radar. So she issued a false attack order, sinking the USS Kanaloa that was carrying an experimental nuclear reactor. However, the nuclear reactor didn't kill the crew, but tore a hole in time and space instead. The crew didn't 'completely' die, they are trapped in an alternate dimension until the event of the game that took place around 2015-2016.
The ghosts, known as The Sunken, can actually just 'move on'. But because they don't want to accept their fate, they seek to go back to the living world by possessing a vessel. Clarissa, is the one they are taking. They can either have her in exchange for Alex and her friends' lives and Clarissa will be erased from existance, no one will have a memory of her, or Alex could save her. Depends on the player's decision.
A vision that I thought was just a vision. Turns out Alex sent back in time and back to the future again shortly after.
There are of course some strange things happens throughout the game, like Alex's reflection talking to her, and things appearing randomly. At some points, Alex will go back in time and meet her dead brother Michael, who were also Clarissa's boyfriend. I thought this was just a vision, but then I realized it's actually real and it blew my mind. Throughout the game, time keep getting messed up. It is breaking, sending Alex back and forth in time.
In the final standoff with The Sunken, I decided to save Clarissa and because I found enough knowledge of their past, I was able to persuade them to 'move on'. The screen was glitching, and Alex woke up on the ferry along with everyone who are save and going home. It was a good ending.
This was kind of disappoint me. The ending wasn't mind blowing at all and broke the whole time-space story concept. Until I started the second playthrough, which is apparently canon.
The first playthrough was only building the whole story of the game, the whole meaning of Oxenfree. In the second playthrough, the events are all the same, of course, but with some differences including Alex have a vague memories of everything that happen(ed). I wish she was able to recall clearly, though, so there might be bigger difference in the second playthrough. But oh, not everyone is Anna DeWitt.
One other thing that blew my mind is Alex's reflection that talk to her. Because that is actually another Alex from another timeline in the future that is trapped in the rift, talking to the Alex from the past, the player-controlled Alex, giving advices for the player.
The rift can only be closed from the inside. And later on I found out that actually, Alex is inside the rift since the first playthrough. She woke up on the ferry... in a pocket universe inside the rift, not in the real world. She's doomed to live through the same day over and over for eternity. Once again, the game blew my mind.
Alex sent back in time for a moment on the island and use a radio to warn herself in the past.
So the second playthrough is the one-night-only-universe inside the rift, looping from the evening Alex on the ferry heading to Edwards Island, until the next morning. In the near end of the second playthrough, Alex can send a message through time using the radio to her other self in the past. It feels a lot like Steins;Gate. This will determine whether the past-Alex will do the same mistake again.
By telling the past-Alex not to come to the island, the loop is broken. The future-Alex is still trapped in the rift, but she saved her (other) self/selves. This was nearly gave me the same feeling from the ending of BioShock Infinite... nearly.
The ending I got. From the left to the right, Jonas become Alex's "other-brother", Ren dates Nona, Michael is revived and still together with Clarissa.
If you confused how Michael is "revived"... other thing that I did was when time sent Alex back to the past where she can meet Michael, I chose to prevent Michael to leave the town. Because he died because Alex wanted to go to swim with him one last time before his departure, and he drowned. With Michael not going to leave town, they don't go to swim and he don't drown. Therefore their parents are not divorced and Jonas not become Alex's step-brother, but simply become a new guy in town instead.
This game was unexpectedly way better than I expected. It's not a horror game but the visual and sound effects set the ambience, the atmosphere to be creepy and unsettling. Even after you finished the second playthrough, you can play again. I guess that means playing as the Alex that don't get the "Don't go to the island" warning from her future self. So after I got that perfect ending, I decided to stop there.
This is now one of my favourite games. Some people may not like the game due to its "walking simulator" gameplay, but the way I see it that makes Oxenfree to be like a book. This is one of those games that leave me in awe... and emptiness.
For a game with short duration, Oxenfree truly deliver the story perfectly. If you like adventure genre, space-time stuff that hurts your brain, with really good dialogue, I think you should give this game a try. Oxenfree is available for PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, Linux, and Mac.
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