OXENFREE (NSP, XCI) ROM + v3.2.16 Update

OXENFREE is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Night School Studio. It was released for OS X, Windows, and Xbox One in January 2016. PlayStation 4 and Linux versions were released later in 2016, followed by iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch versions in 2017. In Oxenfree, players assume the role of the teenage girl Alex on a weekend trip to a local island. After seemingly supernatural events occur, Alex and her friends must unravel the secrets of the island.

The game is Night School Studio’s debut. Influenced by classic teen films and coming-of-age shows, the developers wanted to create a story-driven game without cutscenes, allowing players to roam the environment freely. Oxenfree’s visual presentation marries dark, organic, and analog elements with bright, geometric, and digital ones. Musician sciatic composed the game’s soundtrack, which features digital music production techniques alongside the use of vintage analog tape recorders and receivers.

Oxenfree’s release was accompanied by development documentaries, an alternate reality game, and a collector’s edition, and was met with generally positive reviews, with critics praising the presentation and characters, although some of them were left wanting more. The game was nominated for multiple awards including “Best Narrative” at The Game Awards 2016 and “Outstanding Achievement in Story” at the 20th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. A sequel, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, was released on July 12, 2023. A television series adaptation is also in development.

GAMEPLAY

Oxenfree is a graphic adventure played from a 2.5D perspective, with three-dimensional characters navigating two-dimensional environments. The player controls Alex, a teenager visiting a local island with a group of friends. After accidentally unleashing a paranormal force on the island, Alex and the company must figure out what the force is and how to stop it.

The gameplay is built around the “walk and talk” mechanic: instead of dialogue occurring during cutscenes, speech bubbles appear over Alex’s head, giving the player a choice between two or three dialogue options. At the same time, Alex remains free to move around and navigate the game world. Players can select dialogue options at any time during conversations, choosing to wait for other characters to finish, to interrupt, or to remain silent.

Certain dialogue options cause a thought bubble with Alex inside it to appear over the characters’ heads, suggesting that the player’s choice affected the characters’ relationship. Objects that can be interacted with in the game world display a small circle next to them. Puzzles in the game are solved by finding the correct frequency on Alex’s handheld radio, which can perform actions such as unlocking doors communicating with ghosts, or winding up tape recorders at the correct speed.

Oxenfree does not have any “game over” loss conditions; the player’s choices and relationships with the characters determine which of several possible endings the player receives.

PLOT

Alex (Erin Yvette), a teenager, is on the last ferry heading to the fictional Edwards Island for a weekend party. She is accompanied by Ren (Aaron Kuban), her stoner friend, and Jonas (Gavin Hammon), her new stepbrother. On the island, Alex and company meet Clarissa (Avital Ash), the ex-girlfriend of Alex’s deceased brother Michael, and Nona (Brittani Johnson), Clarissa’s best friend and Ren’s love interest. Ren explains the island was once a military base and that the island’s only permanent resident, Maggie Adler, has recently died. After camping on the beach, Alex, Ren, and Jonas explore the nearby caves, where it is rumored certain radio frequencies cause supernatural events. In a small cavern, Alex tunes her radio to a floating shape and unexpectedly forms a dimensional rift. A voice answers and the teens experience visions before passing out. Jonas and Alex awake in front of a communications tower elsewhere on the island. Ren calls, having passed out in the woods, while Clarissa calls from the decommissioned military fort on the island.

In the woods, Jonas and Alex encounter supernatural events, including Alex’s reflection in the water communicating with her, objects moving on their own, and time looping repeatedly. Time corrects when Alex plays a reel-to-reel tape. They spot Nona, who claims she saw an alternate Jonas and Alex. Alex and Jonas find Ren, but after another time loop, they find him possessed by a “ghost”. Using the radio, Alex creates another rift which returns Ren to normal. Ren and Nona return to the tower.

At the military fort, Alex’s reflection appears in a mirror, giving Alex advice. A ghost questions them and possesses Jonas, revealing that the ghosts are the crew of the submarine USS Kanaloa, thought lost at sea. Alex creates another rift that revives Jonas. They find Clarissa, but time loops to her jumping to her death before disappearing. Nona, Alex, Jonas, and Ren regroup at Harden Tower. Unable to send a radio transmission off the island, Ren suggests finding the key to Maggie Adler’s estate, where she kept a boat. At Adler’s estate, a possessed Clarissa talks with Alex; her conversations and scattered letters left behind by Maggie Adler reveal that Adler mistakenly interpreted scrambled messages from Kanaloa as an enemy transmission, and the submarine was sunk by friendly fire. The crew was not killed, but transported to another dimension due to the sub’s experimental nuclear reactor. Adler and her friend Anna had attempted to communicate with the Kanaloa crew via radio, but Anna was absorbed through the rift. The Kanaloa crew intends to use Alex and her friends’ bodies to escape the dimension, keeping them on the island long enough for their possession attempts to be successful.

Alex and the group discover Maggie Adler’s plan to fix the rifts—crossing to the other side of them and tuning the radio within. Alex repeatedly loops back to the past, mainly to times she talked with Michael. A ghost possesses Jonas and attempts to bargain with Alex, offering to spare her and the rest of her friends if they leave Clarissa behind. Returning to the caves, Alex tunes into a rift that sends her into a void. Encountering the possessed Clarissa, the ghosts warn Alex that she will die if the rift is closed, and Clarissa will be kept by the ghosts if Alex leaves through the rift. Alex can choose to leave, erasing Clarissa from existence; close the rift herself, trapping her with the ghosts; or, if she has found certain letters from Maggie Adler that mention crew members by name, Alex can appeal to them directly, convincing them to let Clarissa and her go.

The reflection of Alex giving her advice is revealed to be Alex from the future. She loops back to a conversation with Michael, who admits that he and Clarissa are planning to move away from town, and asks for Alex’s advice. Time then corrects. Alex wakes up with the others on the ferry back home; Jonas informs her that whatever she did fix the rift and that everything is normal. Everyone reveals that, for a limited period, they revisited memories. They then swear to not tell anyone about their experiences. Nona takes a final group picture.