Oxenfree

Do not understand the hype for this game. Gameplay consists of walking around, interacting with some things and occasionally tuning your radio. There's no puzzles to solve and exploring the island is dull and boring due to how slow you move around, which is likely intentional to pad time for character dialogue... which unfortunately isn't interesting either. Dialogue tends to linger and go on longer than it should just to purposefully waste more time. And I'm saying this as someone who really likes visual novels, a genre of games where is almost entirely about reading and listening. Difference is those games keep engaged to keep reading for hours on-end. The characters here are, quite literally, annoying and shallow teenagers. The whole mystery of the island did not have me engaged, and honestly felt more tiresome when "it" shows up and starts to waste even more of your time. On top of this, the game lacks any sort of key settings to rebind your keys to your preference, as well as having no audio settings whatsoever. How they managed to oversee this in the entirety of the game's development, I do not understand. I've played worse games and I did receive this game for free as part of a prior giveway here on GOG so ultimately I don't feel my time was wasted, but unfortunately this game did not click me with like it seems to with so many others and just felt very below average.

First of all, this game is all story. If you're looking for something with more gameplay, then look somewhere else. If you want cool characters and an interesting plot that will get you invested for about 5-10 hours, give it a chance. I loved this game. Didn't know what I was getting myself into, and I was glad I did. The story revolves around a mystery, and I love solving those. It has cool characters that I can believe existing. The radio and conversation mechanics are engaging, specially the second one because the conversations feel more fluid and natural thanks to it. If you're going to play it you probably will finish it in about 4 to 5 hours. I did 5 grabbing every collectible, which are just that: collectibles. They don't influence the ending or anything, so don't be pressured ton hunt them unless you like the plot. The game has a new game plus feature. It changes things up a bit to keep it fresh, and adds a new ending, but to be honest I preferred the original.

:)

I was looking up some games to play as I was bored and came across this. It was on sale, it looked cute and a lot of positive reviews! Decided I give it a shot. Oh boy, you have no idea how glad I am I bought Oxenfree. This game was a legit gold mine. The story - beautifully written, the narration and voice actors - simply relaxing, art style - honestly gorgeous. I was intrigued and hooked as soon as I started playing, I couldn't stop simply because I was too invested to see the outcomes. If any of you reading this have played Life is Strange, you'd know that in the end you get to choose the way the game ends. Well, with Oxenfree it's different. You can never really tell how it will end, all of the choices you make in the game WILL HAVE AN IMPACT on how it will end and how your relationships develop with the other characters. One can clearly see how much work it was put into this game. I barely write reviews; I only write reviews when something was very bad or very good and well, Oxenfree was just /that/ good.

Game praised by the majority of media game outlets — why not give a shot, right? In reality—uninteresting dialogues, annoying characters, bad to mediocre voice acting. Do not waste your time on this indie "gem".