Oxenfree

This game is great, if you like a good story! Like another review said, it feels like a really good book, but a interactive one! Sure, the long walks can be annoying sometimes, but the atmosphere of the game, the goog characters, the plot, it all really makes up for it. Basically, if you want to experience a great story, try this game!

Minimalistic and unchallenging gameplay. Top class voice actors, music creates a good ambience, with an interesting art style to gaze upon. What absorbing mysterious and weird little story driven adventure game this is. I get a outer limits twilight zone vibe for sure. Fans of Alan Wake might really like this sort of stuff, maybe? I got this on a free giveaway so I am not sure I would of paid the current price $19.99 and that reflects on the overall score. Cheaper at maybe half the price I might of rated it higher like 4/5. Value for money always is always one of the main deciding factors. Compare to other BIG/HUGE games I can get for $19.99 just no to this current pricing.

It's a point and click game from the perspective of games of old. I did use a xbox 360 controller for windows and it worked fine. Left stick to move character, right stick for cursor. No real puzzles to solve. Just kind of wandering around until you trigger the next story event to unfold. I thought the voice-acting was very solid. Also the music/ambience and sets were solid as well. Now...the meat of this game is the story. And although I was left a bit confused at the end (which might be cleared up by more exploration) I really enjoyed the ride there. It's basically a small group of high school kids who get together to spend the night on the beach of an island. Weird stuff happens. It gave me a vibe somewhere in between twin peaks and x-files which I loved. The characters do evolve...and how they do so can change depending on some choices you make which is nice. The graphics, while not stellar, work fine for the type of game this is. and the art direction makes use of the lack of fine detail to provide an aesthetic that compliments the overall mood of the game. In my opinion, if you like slow-paced adventure games with NO difficult puzzles with a creepy atmosphere this MIGHT be for you. Here is my breakdown: Graphics: C+ Sound: B+ Story/characters: B Gameplay: B for me...maybe C, D, or worse for action game fans.

Simply hold D (or A or W or S) to walk in the direction you want, and listen (or don't) to forced dialogue you can somewhat interact with. Dialogue whose subtitles break if you dare open a map mid-conversation, and dialogue you have to interrupt if you want to interact, rather than hearing someones complete thought *before* replying with one of three options a normal functioning person wouldn't normally reply with. All the characters are unlikeable, one-dimensional, annoying, and non-too-bright. We have a stoner nerd, a cool out-of-town skater boy (who smokes too, shocker!), a b♥♥♥♥ queen with a bad attitude and more ex-boyfriends than you can count, and her quiet nerdy tag-along who likes the other nerd, but both of them are too shy to admit it to the other... (Criminy, even the kids of "Saved By The Bell" had more depth than this...) And you play.. Girl with family issues and neon hair. Another issue I have is the puzzles, almost all of them are the same, get locked in a "spooky" area, fiddle with your radio until you find the right frequency, wait for something "spooky" to happen, then do that again two more times until you reach maximum spooky levels, and progress. You know the game is desperate for length when the developers force you to do the same puzzle 7 times over, but make the characters self-aware about it as if that excuses it. "This is getting old!" you said it Alex. The gameplay is horribly unoptimized. Anywhere with a waterfall causes my framerate to chug down to 8 FPS. Which is kind of stupid considering I blow the recommended requirements out of the water, but I digress, and will give the benefit of the doubt to the indie developers. Just know if you're used to your games running a smooth 60 or 120 at all times, this game might want to say otherwise. it's pandering to a very specific demographic, the kinds of "Games Are Art!" people, who, while right to an extent, forget that Games should be Games first, and art as a testament to their quality.

I actually had forgotten I owned this game until I had some free time as was downloading another game and noticed this sitting in my library. Decided to give it a spin. Was hooked with the story but as others mentioned, the running about th island can be a bit of a drag. You basically have conversation with other NPC's in the game and have your choices in comic sytle bubbles that float above your character for you to choose if you can read all choices and click the one you want fast enough. You find very little items and your item you get to "play" with is a radio to do variuos task with. That's not to say there are not other things to interact with (open doors, read signs, jump across streams, etc - but most things are simply finding the right dial setting on the radio). So I played through to the "ending" and then tried the "continue timeline" option to see what it does and it started over. But some option are not the same - I won't spoil it but it does make you think and that does introduce another level to the playing so I think in order to enjoy it you'll need to play a second "round". The most annoying controls are playing around with the radio trying to tune it just right - the games kind of sits there and waits for you to do so and I can't help but wonder what the heck is the point! There are times you need to move the mouse in a circular motion and just a right speed - I nearly burn a hole in my desk trying to get it to work initially because one of the scenes is terrbile and very laggy (easily the worse part of the game).