OXENFREE: Netflix Edition 12+

I really liked the overall audio-visual experience with this game. Also the story was super exciting. I found the lore a bit too complicated: it was tricky to follow the story as there was so much happening, and also because the conversations literally got tangled with each other.

I wanted to loooove this game because it was so intriguing. I love Telltale games, where you get to choose the course of events, and i loved e.g. the game Limbo, and Oxenfree visually and storywise reminded me of that game. So i was super excited to try this game out.

Fact is, that Oxenfree is visually stunning, audio/music/voices were great, and the mood of the game is very captivating. I liked the characters and the weird but interesting storyline. There were no delays, glitches, or chrashes, and the game runs beautifully with an ipad. but there were a couple of things that bummed me out.

First of all, as i said, i played with an ipad, and i found moving the character around a bit clumsy. I felt like the character moved too quickly and rest of the screen couldn't follow. Tapping to a certain place in a road was the only semi-reasonable way to move around, i din't use the swiping method at all - i got irritated after trying a couple of times in the beginning of the game.

Second and biggest thing was the conversations. I was upset because during a conversation, when the other characters speak, every time i chose a speech bubble in order to make a side comment or give an anwer (too early i suppose) to someone, making the choise to speak instantly interrupts the conversation and the other characters don't finish their sentence. E.g., someone is telling a story, the speech bubbles appear and you choose to make a side comment (e.g. ”Oh really?”): you tap the speech bubble, and your character instantly start to speak - but the person telling the story gets interrupted and not finish the sentence/their story. And if you wait until the speech bubbles start to fade away (when it is sort of an optimal time to choose what to say next), half the time I was a nanosecond too late on tapping the screen, and ended up not choosing anything - and not contributing anything to the ongoing conversation.

The problems with these conversations felt like reading a book that has only half sentences, and you're left with half a story at the end. Speaking of the end - that was the third let-down for me. I think the answer to the mystery and the key how to escape the island (don't want to reveal too much) was wayyyyyy too meaningless. I could not believe when the credits appeared… ”wait, what? That was it???”

As i said, i wanted to love this… but sadly, i ended up with a slight letdown.