However, the game asks you to repeat this ‘twist the dial until you get a sound’ time and time again, which gets a bit wearing. Although I was initially a bit confused by this choice (it is 2016 after all), the radio did serve as an interesting little mini-game by finding the right frequencies to affect ghostly happenings. There are a number of mechanics used, the most obvious being the radio. Multiple playthroughs to gather more information and the various endings are encouraged. This is valuable in supernatural games, in which it would be impossible to explain everything anyway, and leaves more than a dash of intrigue after finishing the game. The overall storyline made sense, but exactly what was going on was left to the player’s own conclusion. At points it is difficult to understand what is happening time seems to go forward and backward, characters die and are resurrected or possessed and it is all finished off by an ending which requires… individual interpretation.
I should mention, the ghosts too are unsettling. And with the central focus on the hand-held radio, now more commonly known as a hipster accessory than electronic necessity, the nostalgia is even in the antiquated tech.
In addition, their age, around 18 and about to leave for college, means that they reminisce about younger years spent on the island. For the characters, this is both their grief and the ghostly premonitions which cause flashbacks. There is also a heavy weight of nostalgia underscoring the game. Clarissa deals with grief by lashing out, Alex by mourning and Jonas by reminiscing. Relatedly, the game is unsettling primarily due to the themes it chooses to portray, central among these being grief and the ways in which it affects people. Their relationship really emphasised the feel of the game: looking forward with hope but with a sadness and longing for the past. In my playthrough, Alex and her new step-brother bonded whilst learning more about each other. Even though these did not progress the main story, they felt valuable and interesting. As soon as the game starts, each character has a distinct personality with believable writing and for me, the very best parts of the game are where characters had seemingly insignificant but revealing side-conversations. This is perhaps unsurprising given that the creators are of Telltale stock. The immediately striking part of Oxenfree is how good the writing and voice acting are in this interesting little game. The premise is a group of teenagers on a remote island (so far, so cliché), who by the use of radio, manage to wake something paranormal which seemingly starts to affect them, time and the island itself.
I wasn’t quite sure what the game was about: having bought it in the Halloween Sale, I suspected it must be something spooky, or at least supernatural, but beyond that I hadn’t heard much about it. Though it came out at the beginning of 2016 and we are now nearing the end of 2016, I finally got around to playing Oxenfree.
0 kommentar(er)
