Made by Telltale and Disney alumni, the core of Oxenfree is its characters and your interactions with them.
These early scenes - getting to know Jonas, the awkward attempts at actually having the beach party, a quick game of ‘Truth or Slap’ - set the tone of the game from the beginning. Things only get worse when they accidentally tune into a supernatural phenomenon while playing around with their radio. Usually the turn-out is around 20, but Alex arrives on the island to find that she’s one of only five people who actually arrived. The night is meant to be a huge island party, a Senior year tradition the characters have been hearing about for years and are finally getting to experience themselves - but it’s not off to a great start. To make things just a little bit more awkward, this is the first time Alex has even met Jonas. Alex, the character you control, is heading to the island on the last ferry with her best friend Ren, and her new step-brother, Jonas.
Oxenfree sets you on Edwards Island, a former mining outpost and later military base with a heap of spooky potential from the outset. Oxenfree is more like last year’s indie horror flick It Follows - slow, considered and creepy, something that stays with you long after the momentary terror of overused jump-scares would have faded away. Until Dawn is a gleeful, campy homage to classic teen slasher films, almost playing like a game version of Cabin In The Woods. After playing Oxenfree the comparison doesn’t hold up as well. When we first found out about Oxenfree we compared it to last year’s surprisingly good teen horror game, Until Dawn. It’s retailing for $US19.99 on Steam, and though that might seem a little steep for a game that takes only four to six hours to complete, Oxenfree has surprising replayability.
Oxenfree will also be getting a Windows 10 native release in the near future. Well, it was released on Steam on the 15th, but Aussie Xbox users will have to wait a bit longer, unfortunately. You might remember that Oxenfree was first on my list of most anticipated games for 2016, and it has my gaming year off to a great start after its release on January 15.
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