Oxenfree

Oxenfree is a graphic adventure played from a 2.5D perspective, with three-dimensional characters navigating two-dimensional environments. The player controls Alex, a teenager visiting a local island with a group of friends. After accidentally unleashing a paranormal force on the island, Alex and company must figure out what the force is and how to stop it.

Gameplay is built around the "walk and talk" mechanic: instead of dialogue occurring during cutscenes, speech bubbles appear over Alex's head, giving the player a choice between two or three dialogue options. At the same time, Alex remains free to move around and navigate the game world. Players can select dialogue options at any time during conversations, choosing to wait for other characters to finish, to interrupt, or to remain silent. Certain dialogue options cause a thought bubble with Alex inside it to appear over characters' heads, suggesting that the player's choice had an effect on the characters' relationship.

Alex (Erin Yvette), a teenager, is on the last ferry heading to the fictional Edwards Island for a weekend party. She is accompanied by Ren (Aaron Kuban), her stoner friend, and Jonas (Gavin Hammon), her new stepbrother. On the island, Alex and company meet Clarissa (Avital Ash), the ex-girlfriend of Alex's deceased brother Michael, and Nona (Brittani Johnson), Clarissa's best friend and Ren's love interest. Ren explains the island was once a military base and that the island's only permanent resident, Maggie Adler, has recently died.

After camping on the beach, Alex, Ren, and Jonas explore the nearby caves, where it is rumored certain radio frequencies cause supernatural events. In a small cavern, Alex tunes her radio to a floating shape and unexpectedly forms a dimensional rift. A voice answers and the teens experience visions before passing out. Jonas and Alex awake in front of a communications tower elsewhere on the island.

Cousins Sean Krankel and Adam Hines founded Night School Studio in 2014, having long wanted to collaborate on a video game together. Hines had worked on Telltale Games's story-focused games like Wolf Among Us, while Krankel had met or worked with many future Night School members at Disney. Hines and Krankel were interested in creating a game that told its story in a unique way.

Krankel and Hines looked at other story-focused games, and felt that they either were linear stories driven by set pieces, or branching, player choice-influenced stories told through cut scenes. "We thought, why not let you move freely while communicating, interacting, and exploring a branching narrative?" Krankel recalled. They wanted to make communication a key mechanic of the game, but allow more freedom than previous story-focused games.

Oxenfree was positively reviewed by critics, each version of the game receiving "generally favorable" reviews according to Metacritic. Wired wrote that "Oxenfree shows some smart thinking about the relationship between games and players", and that as Night School's first game, it was an "auspicious debut". Destructoid praised the game for taking inspiration from old movies but still being "anything but generic", writing: "It dials into its own style and mood, tapping into something very heartfelt and special. It might just be the best 'horror' game I've played in years." Polygon's reviewer offered a less enthusiastic take, writing that despite offering many promising attributes, "I finished Oxenfree with my mouth agape, feeling wholly unsatisfied."

The game's audiovisual presentation was commonly considered a strength of the game. Destructoid called the game's watercolor art style "gorgeous". Electronic Gaming Monthly favorably contrasted Oxenfree's traditional media style with the much more common retro pixel styling of indie games. The magazine and others also favorably highlighted the contrast between the watercolor look of the environment and the sharp, digital effects of the paranormal; Electronic Gaming Monthly called it a "massive success" while Destructoid noted the usual softness of the visuals made the intrusion of digital elements feel more unnerving.