

#OXENFREE SWITCH USERS HOW TO#
How to Unlock the Trap Door to the Community Center Basement However, the look is unlike anything Riley or Jacob have encountered, so inspect the panel on the wall to learn that the trap door is controlled by a radio lock – an old military tech from the 50s. So, push the large cardboard box out of the way to reveal a trapdoor that leads down to a basement. Upon entering, you’ll note that the room is kind of empty and that the floor feels slightly hollow. In order to enter the room, return to the Antenna and take the fire escape all the way to the ground. Having investigated all you could, open the door that the yellow cable leads to by the stage.īut, upon attempting to open the door, you’ll learn that it is locked. At the bottom, you’ll be able to investigate the Altar to your left, the large Star Map on the wall, and the Stage. Learning all you can, leave the room and continue left along the way, you’ll have a chance to investigate the yellow cable and the chandelier. At the base of the stairs, enter the door to your right to find a shrine that you can investigate to learn more about the mysterious Mountain Spectre, which Jacob recalls as a hallucination or visual phenomenon. You’ll notice it leads downstairs, beside the altar stage.īut before we head there, let's do a little exploring to see what else we can find. It's a unique mix that should make Night School's future productions ones to watch, and this an auspicious debut.To do so, head back inside the attic and climb down the nearby stairs – if you’re paying close attention, you’ll spot a yellow cable that leads to the antenna, so we’ll need to trace this back to what we can only assume is the control room. It's more subtle than that, and less demanding of your time.)īesides its unique approach to game storyline delivery, which I think will be studied and copied in the future, Oxenfree shows some smart thinking about the relationship between games and players. (Note that I am not saying that Oxenfree makes you play it over and over again. The game plays with time-shifting, and does so in a way that encourages multiple playthroughs, and it seems to be quite aware that a second playthrough of a videogame is, in and of itself, a sort of time-loop, a repeating of the past in an effort to change it. I don't want to spoil anything, but Oxenfree's final moments have some interesting meta-commentary. But the way it finishes may leave you with more questions than answers, and given its relatively short turnaround (and opportunities to alter the dialogue with your choices), you may decide to immediately start it up and play it through again. It feels like less because it moves so quickly and so intriguingly from bit to bit. You'll finish Oxenfree in about four hours, give or take.

So if you take a moment to stop following the story and start looking for hidden secrets, the game's cast of loquacious Chatty Cathys all go completely radio silent for the duration. This falls apart a little in the game's second half, because while Oxenfree gives you a sidequest to complete late in the game, all the dialogue is tied to the story progression. The dialogue keeps up its rapid-fire delivery all the way through the story, as you're exploring. Interrupt someone, and they might come back later to what they'd been talking about, in a way that sometimes sounds almost too natural to have been pulled up on the fly by a computer program. Various speech bubbles pop up around her head, and you can select an option (or not) if you want to interject an opinion. It didn't take long before I found myself quite invested in these characters, interested in the dynamics that quickly popped up between them-and being asked to make some on-the-fly decisions about what Alex, the protagonist, should say or do. It sounds like a natural, vibrant conversation, and it moves fast. The lines of dialogue, precisely and wittily written and delivered, come fast and furious. Its unique approach to game storytelling is apparent from its first moments, as we watch a group of teenagers chatter while riding a ferry to a nearby island.
#OXENFREE SWITCH USERS PC#
Oxenfree's a short game, but there's a lot going on under its surface.Īvailable today on PC and Xbox One, and published in partnership with Robert Kirkman's shop Skybound, Oxenfree is the debut project of Night School Studio, founded by two cousins with experience making games at Disney and Telltale.
