Review #646: Oxenfree

 Ollie ollie, oxen free!

 Hope you like dialogue, because Oxenfree is an adventure game all about it. This is what you'd call a laid back game, there's no action, no explosions, just a few puzzles and a whole lotta conversations

 You play as Alex, a teenage girl out on a trip to Edwards Island with her step-brother, Jonas, her friends, Ren and Nona, as well as her not-so-friend Clarissa . Things quickly go amiss when Alex and Jonas mess with a radio while inside a cavern, and now ghost-like beings are out to get them. The rest of the game is about the group of friends trying to regroup and find a way out of the Island before their new incorporeal playmates use their bodies to get out of their prison. The game lasts about 5 hours, give or take, although quite a bit of time is taken up by numerous, lengthy loading screens. The progressions is pretty linear, you always know where you have to go, but there are a few decisions Alex can make that'll change how a few things pan out, there are also hidden messages you can find hidden throughout the Island to further your understanding of what's going on as well as unlocking the best ending.

 The game will have you running around the Island as Alex, while solving simple puzzles or using your Radio to clear even simpler puzzles by tuning into the right channels. Alex is always joined by another character, Jonas most of the time, and these secondary characters will talk. A lot. You'll have a ton of different opportunities to interject with dialogue of your own, by pressing any of three different buttons on the joycon(The other one reserved for context-sensitive actions), signifying different responses. You can also opt not to speak and watch characters interact with each other or see how they take your silence. A few dialogue choices will change a few events, but most often than not they'll change how characters perceive you, which, in turn, will affect the ending.

 A simple game like this shouldn't have any control issues, but this one kinda does. Moving around the environments can be kinda tough at times, since roads throughout the island are pretty rigid, so, for example, if you want to take a curve you have to follow the exact perfect line the game considers as the 'road', otherwise Alex will turn on her tracks. A couple of pathways can be a bit finicky with how they'll let Alex go through, but, luckily, the Switch version allows for touchscreen control, so if you get annoyed you can simply touch where you want Alex to go and she'll figure out the way herself.

 This is a fairly simple game as far as looks go, featuring simple 3-D models walking on beautiful hand-drawn environments... which begs the question: Why does it run so poorly on Switch? Besides the previously mentioned excessively long loading screens, the game will sometimes freeze for a frame as you move around. The framerate leaves something to be desired as well. Needless to say, this is a poorly optimized game, which kinda blows since it sucks a bit of fun from the game.

 Oxenfree is a fairly decent game, even if I feel like it's nothing to special. That said, the Switch port leaves a lot to be desired, issues like the long loading screens completely turned me off from exploring the Island in order to collect the hidden messages. Issues like this prevent it from being as good as it could be.
6.0 out of 10