Have you ever had a good idea, and just didn’t know how to execute it? Ya know, like back when you were a teen, and you’d be kicking back in a lawn chair outside your buddy’s van at 2 a.m., drinking stuff you shouldn’t be drinking, smoking stuff you shouldn’t be smoking, looking at the sky and talking about whatever weird shit popped into your head?
If your teenage years were anything like mine, you sat in History class doodling some pretty f***ed up stuff in the margins of your notebook, or you wrote a short story about a dream you had, and whoever was close enough would see it and want you to turn it into some grand project that you didn’t have either the willpower or knowledge to execute.
Or, you hit up Blockbuster Video, perused the lower shelf for the straight-to-video gems, and went home with a few $1.99 per-week classics that literally had no right exsiting.
What do all these things have in common with Oxenfree? Well, if I had to guess, Oxenfree got its start with two people staring at the sky after smoking some pretty heavy shit. Then, it was fleshed out by someone doodling something in the corner of a notebook. Last, it was translated into whatever form of medium those people had access to in order to share their weird idea with the world.
Oxenfree is a game in the loosest definition. It takes a cool idea and shares it with us using a walking simulator as a vessel. The end result is an intriguing story with mind-numbingly dull gameplay. I read the hype when this game came out, and I kept myself ignorant of what it was about until I was able to play it for myself, and I have to admit, I was glad I did. The story had me wanting to finish the game, but if I would have already known the outcome, I wouldn’t have made it even a quarter of the way through the game.
The walking in this “walking simulator” is excruciatingly slow, and making your way across the map only to realize you have to go all the way back is enough to make you drop your shoulders and just… kind of… sigh, in disbelief. Many times I felt like throwing a tantrum like a four-year-old, but more, it was a feeling of bewilderment. Of defeat. Because I knew that even if I turned it off, I’d come back to it later to see the story through.
For that reason, I won’t go into story details. The mystery and curiosity will be the only thing keeping you going, because that’s literally all there is to experience. Without it, it’s just a mindless slog around a map that is twice as big as it appears due to the windy, twisting paths and roundabout ways to get anywhere. I’m convinced that with the slow traversal speed and meandering pathways, this a four-hour game that would’ve otherwise only lasted 45 minutes.
Oxenfree would’ve worked much better as an interactive novel, because the story is really the only thing it has going for it. That being said, it’s not a challenging game or even one that could result in death (that I know of) so if you have a significant other or friend that likes the story and interactive sides of a game but not necessarily the challenge or platforming, it might be worth a look.
