Character Interaction and Oxenfree

And so, it is the week before payday.

The coffee jar is empty. The bills are due. There is nothing on Netflix left to watch.

Amazingly, you can buy a quarter of a AAA game with what little money you have left…

Welcome, then, to a new series I’m calling “Weekend with Indies”! It’s like Weekend at Bernie’s, but with less corpse related hijinks and more independent games that I’ve played over the weekend. I’ll be doing this once a month, and whilst the games may not be the latest, they will certainly be interesting and worth checking out.

This is why I love indie games. Whilst the AAA scene innovates in terms of graphically fidelity and extorting more and more money out of consumers, the indie scene actually does some pretty novel things with the medium itself, be it their art styles, subject matters, or mechanics. They’re usually cheap and fun experiences too, so they work for a broke graduate like me. This month, the indie I’ve spent the weekend with is Oxenfree by Night School Studio, a team of four ex Telltale and Disney developers.

Oxenfree is an adventure game focusing on a group of teenagers on their last high school getaway on Edwards Island, a spooky and isolated island. Naturally, everything goes a bit Mystery Inc after a while and the story is a blast. It’s engaging and cuts quite close to the heart at times, but the thing I want to discuss is the dialogue system, which honestly might be the smartest and most intriguing I’ve come across in a long time.

Night School Studio (2016)

The dialogue system, as you can expect from an adventure game, is branching and the player gets three speech options most of the time. What you might not expect is that the developers have spent a great deal of time on the sound design to get the player’s dialogue to cut off other characters and talk over them, or so precisely timed that the response sounds like natural conversation.

A fluid dialogue system like this weaves each individual characters input into the conversation in a very organic way, making them more relatable to the player, not like watching actors on a stage. I had immense fun playing through a game of truth or dare on the beach, with multiple characters all chiming in on after the other; it felt like I was playing a party game with friends. One of the characters didn’t want to discuss a certain issue, and I saved him from having to by changing the discussion. He later thanked me for it.

Another example of this system’s success is the fluid experience of arguments. The butting in over someone, the hesitations that come in their follow up, and the flustering all sounds authentic and like a real argument. The system is intrinsic to the overall narrative too, as the more you butt in over the top of individual characters, the more likely you are to alienate them and change the outcome of the game. This is great for player agency and also great for replayability, something that indie games often get criticised for lacking.

Night School Studio (2016)

On top of this fascinating system is the actual conversational topics the characters deal with, along with the delivery. The voice acting cast are fantastic and great at putting themselves back in the frame of mind of an eighteen year old. When the group start out, and when they aren’t talking about the paranormal events of the later game, there’s jokes about girls and guys and relationships; they talk about where they’re planning to go to college; there’s deep, intimate conversations between the player character and her new step-brother. Similar to what Dontnod accomplished with Life is Strange, Night School Studio have really captured what it means to be young in Oxenfree.

If you can pick up this game it is highly recommended. It’s not just the dialogue that’s great, but pretty much everything else about it. SCNTFC's immersive soundtrack and the ethereal, paper cuttings art style of the game are reason enough to be intrigued by the game at a glance.

Oxenfree is available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

I hope you enjoyed reading this month’s “Weekend with Indies”, until next time!

All images sourced from the Oxenfree press kit