"Oxenfree" Review

Truly, Oxenfree has the most accurate title in gaming history.
There are, in fact, no oxen anywhere in this game.
*ba-dum tss*
If that horrid joke negatively affected you in any way, you may not want to purchase Oxenfree. Most of the time, the writing is actually pretty decent, but when it tries to be funny it is about that level if not worse. More on that later.
I went into Oxenfree not really knowing what to expect. I knew that it was kind of a paranormal game involving teenagers, but I didn't really know any more than that. Having now gone through it, I have some general thoughts, but there are a number of ways that it can end and I only got one ending, so just bear that in mind while reading this.
---------------------                                                           --------------------

In Oxenfree, you are Alex: A High School girl on her way to a traditional end-of-the-year super party at the beach on Edwards Island, which can only be reached by ferry. She is going to this party with some of her friends and her new stepbrother, Jonas, who she spends most of the story with. There is a legend that if you bring a radio to a cave on the island, you can tune into stations that don't actually exist, so in true teen supernatural movie fashion, our heroes enter the cave and tune into an unknown radio signal, and there we have the basis for our story. More on that later.
Besides Jonas, the other characters are Ren, Nona, and Clarissa. Ren is your average *pained expression* "funny" character, Clarissa is the mean one, and Nona is the Marcy to Clarissa's Peppermint Patty. In a story such as this, good character development is a must. For some of these characters, the developers succeed. Alex and Jonas are well-developed characters, and I dare say that Alex is a strong contender for the top spot on my Best Protagonist list this year (which would make her the first female protagonist to win this award from me). Jonas has this apathetic air about him, and this apathy gets fleshed out and morphed as the story goes on.
The developers also succeed in fleshing out Clarissa. I was legitimately pleasantly surprised at how well they developed her, just because it is all too easy for game story writers to simply have the mean one be mean. Throughout the course of the game, we get little snippets of the past that show how Clarissa got this way, and it is a small thing, but it works in the game's favor.
Then there is Nona...yep.
Then there is Ren. Really, the biggest flaw with the character development in Oxenfree is Ren, and even he has one redeeming quality. The one good thing about Ren's character is the fact that he is not, as teen story cliche would typically have it, deeply in love with Alex. I spoil that with no shame because it is a fact that is established quite early on and it doesn't really matter that much. But besides this one good aspect of Ren's character, the rest is crap. He is exactly what he seems: a short class clown type who spends all his free time eating pot brownies and hindering the events of the plot because of it. It is disappointing to see the same people who fleshed out a stereotypical mean girl character fail to do the same to a stereotypical stoner character. At one point when he is being criticized for eating another pot brownie, Ren declares that it helps his thought process. I know that this was an attempt at character development, but when it all comes down to it, the only evidence to support Ren's assertion is his word. This game is short as it is, having at least one segment where we get to see why Ren needs pot to think properly would have really worked wonders, and it would have made the game less short. If Ren had been kind of a pointless side character like Nona, I wouldn't have minded so much, but as it stands, he is put at the forefront of the game's events on a number of occasions and we are expected to care for him as much as we do for Jonas.
---------------------                                                           --------------------

Now, let us talk about gameplay. There really isn't that much to speak of. Basically, gameplay is just there to get you from story point A to story point B (which I am totally fine with, for the record, if it is done well), and it is made up of two parts: walking and radio tuning. I would really like to say that the walking is at least decent, but it really isn't. It is quite clunky, despite the fact that you literally cannot walk anywhere besides set in stone, thin paths. When the path curves a lot, you have a tendency to end up going back and forth because you can't figure out which key to press to make you go the way you want. This was a constant problem, and when paired with some really iffy curve detection on the part of the character (meaning if the path goes up you wont be able to go up until you get into absolutely the right spot), walking can be a real chore.
The radio tuning does add a little bit of personality to the game, which I am thankful for. At any point, you can open up the radio and try tuning into stations, and there are (is?) a wide variety of stations to choose from. One moment you can be listening to jazz, then Bugs Bunny singing. These don't really add anything to the plot, but they are a nice little addition. It is when the radio is actually used for the plot that it starts to falter. You see, tuning the radio is actually a pretty significant hassle. It involves dragging the mouse, and what that basically amounts to is having to pick up the mouse and put it back in position over and over again to keep tuning the radio in a certain direction. This is especially bad later on when you get a radio with that can tune into about twice as many frequencies. So, couple the hassle of tuning the radio for the plot with the fact that you need to tune into three frequencies in a row most of the time, and you have a lot of sitting around listening to droning sounds taking up most of the game's time.
---------------------                                                           --------------------

The characters and the gameplay in Oxenfree are there for one purpose: to help the story along. Do these aspects do their job? Kind of.
For the most part, at best the story is pretty average even by teen supernatural thriller standards and far too vague at worst. This is the case for most of the game, but there are moments that break the mold. There were moments that made me exclaim out loud out of shock and there were touching moments that, again, elicited a vocal reaction from me. In addition, some of the choices you are tasked with making are legitimately difficult. I know that I've been harping on the negative of Oxenfree for pretty much this whole review, so I want to really hammer in this point. There are times when Oxenfree truly shines in its story, but it just doesn't play to its strengths enough. Oxenfree's story truly shines when it is focusing on its characters, not when it is trying to be brain-bending, and that is the root of the issue here. Most of Oxenfree's story deals with reality being bent, and it just doesn't work. There is a great story under the surface here. The more character-driven segments prove as much. Hell, even the character-driven story moments involving Ren are great, and if that doesn't show how well the developers handle the story at these points, nothing will.
---------------------                                                           --------------------

Oxenfree is a game that really tries, and it shows. I mean, just looking at and playing it, you would never in your wildest dreams expect that it was made on the Unity Engine. You read that right, the Unity Engine. That is one last positive of this game: the visuals are unique and darn impressive. So, with that in mind, Oxenfree does a fantastic job of standing out especially given its humble origins. But the fact of the matter is that Oxenfree is mostly filler and the mechanics just don't play very well. I'm far too small-time a reviewer to suspect that the developers read my stuff, but if they happen to, then I would encourage them to keep on making games. They have proven that they can take a simple engine and make something truly unique using it, and they have also proven that they have storytelling potential. I was doing some research on the studio, and it turns out that it is made up of folks from Telltale games and Disney. Perhaps this particular group of people just needs to do a few more projects together to really form a solid identity as a studio.

So, let us review the negatives:
Ren's development -.5
Clunky mechanics -.9
Mostly filler story -1

The final score for Oxenfree is:
7.6/10 - Acceptable
Maybe next time, Night School Studio, maybe next time.