IF ONLY MULDER WERE HERE
“What if you took Limbo, but you could talk?” That seems to be the design philosophy behind Oxenfree, the debut game from Night School Studio. The idea is so central that the game could almost be described as a “talking simulator”. Its five characters – especially protagonist Alex – run around a mysterious island commenting on everything that happens with astonishing verbosity. Nothing is allowed to go unsaid: talking is the highway to the inner self; talking brings people together and drives them apart; talking interprets the inexplicable.
Alongside Alex and her best friend, chatterbox Ren, there are Jonas, her newly acquired know-it-all stepbrother; Nona, who remains just as bland throughout the night; and Clarissa, who is inexplicably antagonistic until we learn why.
The group takes a ferry to Edwards Island, a tourist attraction that was also a strategic military position during World War II. They plan to spend the night there after closing time, partying on the beach. Alex brings along an old analogue radio which, according to Ren, can pick up mysterious phenomena on the island if you tune it to the right frequency in the right place. Before long, she finds the right one and opens a portal to another dimension.
What follows is a series of increasingly unsettling events unfolding over the course of a single night. They communicate with interdimensional entities, become trapped in time loops, and eventually find their bodies temporarily possessed by a strange force. They discover that they are trapped on the island. It is an intriguing supernatural mystery, reminiscent of something from The X-Files, or perhaps The Twilight Zone.
The situation is interesting enough that it deserves to be explored by mature characters with a genuine fascination for the inexplicable – Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, for instance. The entire island is like a museum of old radio frequencies to tune into and abandoned documents revealing its history.
Unfortunately, we instead experience it through these five teenagers, who, despite everything happening around them, mostly seem obsessed with themselves. Their endless observations and anecdotes take place almost in passing, usually while you slowly jog through the side-scrolling landscape. Two or three short dialogue options appear above Alex’s head, and you click on whichever one you want to say. Often, you interrupt whoever is speaking.
The idea is to make the conversations sound spontaneous, and technically, it works well. The dialogue flows naturally. The problem is how it is written. The game never fully commits to horror, comedy or drama. The result is a story that constantly skims the surface. Everything drifts past in one unbroken stream, without much dramatic tension or friction.
The group cracks jokes, gets high, talks about the future, and so on. Sometimes they get personal. Both Alex and Jonas have recently lost close family members, but their grief is briefly brought up before being quickly brushed aside by whoever started the conversation. On to the next joke. Oh, suddenly things got creepy and mysterious, but that is soon forgotten because we have to talk about Ren secretly having a crush on Nona.
Their problem is that they are nowhere near as interesting as they seem to think they are. And even though the actors try to breathe life into these bores, I cannot shake the feeling of rehearsed spontaneity. Every stammer sounds scripted; the arguments have been polished to a degree no real argument could ever achieve; the jokes sound premeditated – the kind of jokes you have been carrying around for ages, waiting for just the right moment to use.
The environments were designed by Heather Gross, who previously worked for Disney. She does her best to inject some of the darkness that the dialogue fails to provide. Buildings, trees, roads and mountains are made up of squares, ovals and ellipses – simple shapes filled with cold colours. Natural darkness is mixed with electric light and shadowy interiors. Old analogue technology and bunkers give the impression of a place frozen in time.
At the same time, flashbacks to happier times are depicted with considerably more warmth. In old memories, Edwards Island is bathed in sunlight. Alex’s home is rendered so brightly that it is almost blinding. The contrast makes Edwards Island a bleak and inhospitable place in the present. The retro-flavoured synth music, composed by scntfc, uses vintage analogue equipment that reinforces the game’s themes of time and technology. The soundtrack adapts well to the mood – which unfortunately contributes to the story’s lack of cohesion.
The game is at its best when the supernatural takes over. The entities speak in cryptic, distorted dialogue that is difficult to interpret. Are they hostile? Do they need help? Can they help us? As long as the group is puzzling over this mystery, I feel involved. Unfortunately, they always return quickly to their default setting: self-absorbed bickering and superficial observations.
The point, of course, is that we are supposed to get to know them and become invested in their fates. When we have to make moral decisions, things are supposed to come to a head – how do you support one friend without hurting another? If the people at the centre of the story – and their relationships – had been more interesting, I might have felt some genuine anguish. Instead, I felt nothing.
The ending is another problem. There is, in effect, a “good” ending: an almost absurdly happy one, where everything turns out just fine. Knowing this makes you play to “win” rather than to explore different possibilities. Life Is Strange took a different approach. Its ending was a difficult choice, one where you could not possibly set everything right. You simply chose the ending you could live with.
The concept of dialogue-driven mechanics is interesting in itself, but a successful concept is only half the battle. The other, more important part is missing here. Dialogue must not only sound natural; it must make me care about the people speaking. And in a mystery, it must also make me want to dig for answers. Here, it does neither.
I left Edwards Island feeling as though I had seen the beginning of something much bigger than what was actually told. I will only return if Mulder and Scully come along.
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