As far as premises go, Night School Studio’s Oxenfree seems to have a relatively straightforward one. It’s a horror movie tale as old as time: a group of teens gather with intent to party, and a masked killer/evil spirit/mutant/trickster demon wreaks havoc on their innocent souls. If you’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it a hundred times—and if you’re a horror fan like me, you’ll happily see it a hundred more.
I recently sat down to play Oxenfree, knowing very little about it besides the basic premise. I expected some exciting twists and turns, choice-based gameplay (my favorite), and a fun, lightly spooky experience. Instead, I sat back in my chair hours later, watching the end credits play with the wind knocked out of my lungs and a lump in my throat I couldn’t swallow. I reached up to wipe my eyes, tired from staring at the screen, and found my cheeks wet with tears. I hadn’t even noticed I was crying.
For weeks after finishing the game, it bounced around in my head. I wondered, could I have made different choices? Who might I have saved? What was that? This approachable little indie game had caught me completely by surprise and sent me spinning, and I realized that I had severely underestimated it.
Beneath the seemingly familiar surface of Oxenfree lurks a deeply affecting story about the ripple effect of loss, and is one of the best pieces of tragic horror created in the last decade. It recently celebrated its five-year anniversary, and, in my opinion, the story holds up even better now than it did upon release. At its heart, Oxenfree is a ghost story that seamlessly weaves horror together with human tragedy. It understands that, in order for there to be ghosts, there must be loss.
The basic story of Oxenfree is this: a group of teenagers meet up on Edwards Island for an annual get-together full of underage drinking, hanging out by the beach, and general unsupervised shenanigans. The cast of characters includes the player character Alex, her new stepbrother Jonas, her friend Ren, his crush Nona, and Nona’s best friend Clarissa. A little bit into the evening, Ren proposes that the group check out the caves next to the beach. There is an urban legend that, if you bring a handheld radio to these caves and turn it to just the right frequency, you can tune in to an otherworldly presence. Alex brings her radio into the caves and begins to fiddle with it, tuning it to various frequencies. When she hits the right one, strange things begin to happen in the cave, whispering voices and mysterious lights appearing out of nowhere. Even after she shuts off the radio and leaves the cave behind, what’s done is done. All that she (and the player) can do is try to lose as little as possible, solve the mysteries of the island’s past, and escape with both her sanity and her life.
The gameplay is extremely simple, allowing the player to control only Alex’s movement, radio, and decisions. The player makes choices via deceptively simple dialogue options that pop up on the screen. One dialogue choice may seem to be the obvious right answer, only to result in dire unintended consequences. The player must choose Alex’s words very carefully in order to make it through the night. The player must also pay close attention to Alex’s surroundings. Even the smallest bits of information about the island can come up again at a later point, including a moment where getting a piece of historical trivia wrong could result in the loss of one or more of her friends.
The game isn’t all doom and gloom, however. Horror is at its most effective when we care about our central characters. We need to be able to see them in moments of levity and joy, so that the lows pack that much more of a punch. Oxenfree is excellent at endearing the audience to its characters, creating realistic teenagers that are as obnoxious as they are lovable. Alex is deadpan and sarcastic—every inch the classic YA protagonist in a lot of ways—but she is also terrified of the future, longing for the happy days she fears are behind her. Jonas, Alex’s new stepbrother, is a similarly engaging character. He is unsure of himself, lacking a stable place in this friend group and in his new family. He is still navigating his interactions cautiously, trying to figure out exactly where he fits in. Depending on how you play the game, you may watch a sibling bond blossom between him and Alex that is genuinely sweet to behold. Ren is a little more difficult to love—he’s the jokester, the friend who is always “on.” Though the character can be obnoxious at times, he provides necessary comic relief to the game, and feels like the sort of guy you’d get to know in a small town high school. Nona exists primarily to be Ren’s love interest and doesn’t get much to do—even still, she has her own distinct personality. She’s easy to get along with, a friendly girl with a sense of humor and a fear of conflict. Clarissa is probably the most difficult character of the main cast: a snide and cold presence who rarely acknowledges Alex except to get in a dig or two. She is distant, and occasionally jaw-droppingly cruel, but as the story unfolds and more of her backstory is revealed, the reason for her behavior becomes clear. The player may not like Clarissa by the end, but they do understand, and even sympathize with her.
Given the cast of characters, the game’s uniquely beautiful art style, and the pleasant soundtrack, it’s easy to slip into a false sense of security—comfortable, like you’re watching a coming-of-age dramedy à la Lady Bird. You know, until the ghosts show up and everything falls apart.
The horror at the heart of Oxenfree is derived from tragedy. There is a pervasive sense of loss, of helplessness, and of being at the mercy of forces beyond one’s control. In the current horror media landscape, this fits right in. Over the last several years there have been massively successful and critically acclaimed horror works that are just as heartbreaking as they are frightening. In theaters, we have seen works like Hereditary, Relic, and She Dies Tomorrow, which pair supernatural horror elements with distressing real-world fears of the loss of a loved one, dementia, and our own mortality. Netflix’s adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, a limited series by the same name, was met with massive critical and audience success. There will always be a place for lighthearted horror that thrives on jump scares, but there is clearly a craving for horror stories that reflect our deepest existential terror back at us and force us to reckon with the things we would ordinarily rather not think about.
Television, film, and fiction are obviously fantastic mediums for horror storytelling. However, I do think that games are incredibly underrated when it comes to horror. There is something so inherently personal about actively exploring a horror story in a game rather than passively watching it play out on screen. Many of the most successful recent horror games, like Five Nights at Freddy’s or Phasmophobia, use this sense of personal involvement to their advantage. These games rely on first person point of view, breaking down the sense of fourth wall as much as something can while still having a screen in its way. The jump scares hit harder and work better, because you are controlling the main character to the point that you almost forget you’re playing a game. It feels more real, more involved, and the fear more potent.
Of course, these games employ a very different kind of horror than Oxenfree, which uses the interactivity of gaming for an entirely different purpose. What games like Freddy’s and Phasmophobia do for jump scares and tension building, Oxenfree does for horror storytelling with strong emotional impact. Though the game is played from a third person point of view, the player is responsible for all of Alex’s choices, and the consequences that result from them. Whether you want to or not, you are forced to decide where to go, what to do, and who to save. Even with the little bit of separation afforded by the POV, it feels immensely personal when your choices are impacting the way that character relationships shift, the events that unfold, and even who survives. During one particularly fraught scene, I made what I thought was the right choice, only to watch a character fall to their death in front of me. In retrospect I couldn’t be sure if my choice had directly caused this death, but in the moment all I could think was, “Oh my god. It’s all my fault.” In that moment, Alex and I were going through the same thing, the same nauseating rush of guilt, shame, and terror all at once.
The game forces the player to make difficult choices throughout the story, and ups the ante by timing many of these choices out. If the player does not choose quickly enough, the choice is made for them. This sense of urgency forces the player to choose quickly, without having time to think the ramifications of that choice through. A lot of the events of Oxenfree were determined before Alex even arrived on the island, but the player’s choices drive the story along at the same time. The result is a deeply effective blend of hopelessness and responsibility. You were never going to escape the ghosts of Edwards Island, but you still feel as though whatever they do is your fault.
There is something about tragic horror stories that keep us coming back. Like Alex, we feel determined to change our endings, to escape the pull of the darkness nipping at our heels. The allure of a game like Oxenfree is not just that it allows us to encounter our worst fears, but that it gives us the chance to escape them. On my first playthrough, I thought I had unlocked the game’s happiest ending. Everyone survived and made it onto the ferry home, breathing a sigh of relief that they lived through the night. Alex delivered a cheerful narration, describing every character’s life after the events on the island. Then, suddenly, Alex mentioned that she was leaving to catch the ferry and spend the night on the island. We were back at the beginning of the game, preparing to start the night all over again. I hadn’t made my way out unscathed at all, but found myself right back where I started. The happy ending I thought I had won was simply an illusion. And yet, I keep wanting to try and play the game again—no matter how unachievable that happy ending seems, no matter how much it feels like doom is written in the stars and there is no escape. I don’t know if I’ll be able to change Alex’s fate, but the beauty of Oxenfree is that, even if I know it might break my heart all over again, I still want to try.
