Publisher: Night School Studios/Skybound
Genre: Adventure
Summary: Alex goes to a local island to spend the night celebrating the end of her junior year of high school with friends and her new stepbrother, but strange anomalies occur.
Gameplay: A large part of the game is conversation, so much so that I was almost tempted to also classify it as a visual novel. Alex has a choice of responses, but will also not respond if a choice is not picked quickly enough (or you can deliberately choose not to say anything.) Depending upon when dialogue is chosen, she'll sometimes interrupt as well, resulting in dialogue that flows very naturally. The conversation choices, of course, affect the game.
There are also choices in where to go when. The other gameplay element is interacting with objects and especially adjusting radio signals to accomplish things.
Style: The game has a beautiful style with rich colors. Watercolor medievalesque landscapes and stylized cartoons blend together nicely. The excellent music works hand-in-hand with the sound effects of static, which with other lighting effects is impressively eerie. All of this works well towards making the game scary without it being gory.
Story: "Oxenfree" is excellent at characterization and building a suspenseful and emotional story. There is some ambiguity and uncertainty to some plot elements, which on the one hand could be frustrating, but on the other could be seen as freeing the player to decide.
Although dark and creepy regardless, the richness of the characters and the ability of choice offered by the game keeps it from feeling hopeless like I often fear horror will be. There is also an interesting element where replays have an in-game reasoning and can be substantially different.
Conclusion: "Oxenfree" offers a beautiful and fascinating story with great characters. I'm not a big horror fan personally, but the unique art, story and characters, and many choices make me enjoy "Oxenfree" nevertheless.