Andy's Thread of Obscure Games No One Cares About
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Bought this game on sale a couple weeks ago, partly because Andy has similar tastes to me and he liked it, and I finished it last night.
Playing the game it certainly has a very unique atmosphere created through the art style, the music and sounds, and most of all the unrelenting dialog in which you take part selecting conversation options of the leading female character. The dialog is somewhat the star of the game along with a branching story that even by the end wasn't exactly sure had happened. This dialog is that of intelligent 17-18 year olds that all have that Juno kind of wit mixed with sarcasm and honest feelings. The devs bill it as a "coming of age" story and that fits perfectly though you may not fully realize until you finish.
Actually there was quite a bit I didn't realize until I finished. Thankfully, and wonderfully, the devs included 5 documentary shorts that give insight into the game that I never realized playing it. Of special importance was that I never fully understood if my dialog actions were having any affect on the outcome of the story (they do). In fact, I would LOVE more small developers to do what Night School Studio did and add short documentaries on their vision, gameplay decisions, sound, characters, and graphics. It truly enhanced my gaming experience with Oxenfree.
I agree with Andy's score at 87 though I would have given it an 80 had the documentary not been included. Thanks to it, I can now even see myself playing through it again sometime to see what new branches I can take. I can recommend this title as a bargain if you ever see it below $10.
Glad you enjoyed it. I like games that do dialog and characters well. I also appreciate games are original and take risks. There was also something about this game that just felt like it was a sincere creation of talented artists, not something put together based on focus groups.
Thanks for mentioning the documentaries. I didn't notice those, for some reason. I just finished watching them. Good stuff. What a hard-working and talented team. It's amazing how much work and talent has to go into creating a "little" game like this. Six times as much branching dialog as a Telltale game. Wow. And so many little programming challenges.
Watching the docs gave me a language for understanding what was unique about it -- as the main guy said, it's a "walking and talking game," which no one had done before. The morse code embedded in the theme music is pretty cool, too.
Pretty late to the party here, but I bought this when it came out on X1, and it stands out as one of the best indie games I've played! You sum it up perfectly above. Loved the soundtrack too, perfectly moody.
Glad you got to check out the documentaries..doesn't it make you wish others would do this too? It was full of so many "a-ha!" moments seeing what they were thinking, how the game progressed, and more. The one dev who mentioned playing through it hundreds of times during production and he is still playing it and finding new dialog he hadn't heard before is something that those big production houses ::cough:ea:cough:: should be doing with sports game commentary.
Hard to believe this is the first offering from Night School Studio though some have prior experiences elsewhere. I'll be on the lookout for their next game for sure.
Big thank you to you! I beat this game like 6 months ago, and had no idea there were documentaries "hidden" in the options menu! I'm going to watch all of them today. Getting the itch to play through this again too...
I was planning to play a couple games before Oxenfree, but I think you guys have moved it to the front of my list.
What about Riptide GP2 though guys? I'm kidding, i just finished it for another easy platinum. It's kinda like Wave Race 64 but 20 years later, for anyone who's an N64 fan. It was kinda fun. It's crazy to me how many random games there really are out there that don't even get mentioned. Then you have people who complain that there's no games to play. If you're one of those people, i think you're in the wrong hobby.
Isn't that a strategy RPG, though? I've always avoided that genre, because it sounded like too much thinking was involved. Not that I'm anti-thinking, but I don't like puzzle games and other games that require a lot of logical processing, mental calculation, strategery, and so forth. Not really my thing. I thought Banner Saga was a lot of that, with some humor added. Correct me if I'm wrong. I've never played it.
i would describe it narrative driven turn based combat game. its fairly simple as far as "strategy" goes, not too indepth. the story and characters are really good though and your choices effect outcomes like a walking dead game. if youre okay with turn based combat i would defo recommend it. plus it looks and sounds lovely
Oh, okay. I thought it was heavier on the strategy than that. I'll check it out then. I'm not a big fan of turn-based combat, but if the rest of the game is good, that might be enough to hook me. Thanks for the suggestion.
The second one just released in April.
I just got BS2 free on xbl gold, but I haven't checked it out yet...n DAMN YOU RED DEAD REDEMPTION!!!
I know this is a long shot but. Anyone played Tricky Towers or Rebel Galaxy? I guess those are the two free games for PS+ in August. There's lots of complaining that we're not getting anything good but hey, better than nothing.
Rebel Galaxy is supposed to be awesome from what I understand. I'm looking forward to that one.
Oxenfree has been played....virtually in one sitting. Cool stuff. I got anal with finding some collectibles (I should never look at achievements/trophies before playing a game), which kinda made the last 3/4 a big of a slog. Watching a spoilercast about it now, pretty crazy how many things can change in your game based on decisions you make and things you say. I replayed just the beginning, and heard complete different dialogue.
Ah, glad you liked it (minus the collectible-slog).
Did you end up
bringing Michael back from the dead?
I did not. I"m glad I didn't end up letting the achievement for that dissuading me from playing the game, you were right that it's not remotely a goal or story point. I never would have even known it were possible were it not for the achievement / trophy.
Yeah, that was my feeling too.
Glad you liked it. I'm glad one of my "obscure games no one cares about" turned into a game at least a few people cared about, lol.
There are so many cool lesser-budget games out there these days, it's crazy how good good indie games have become in the last several years. I'm starting to find my game tastes are mirroring my music and film tastes, which is cool. I'm also finding that the older I get, the more I enjoy a shorter narrative paced game that I don't feel like I have to sink a ton of time and effort into, but can still get a really interesting, unique, and enjoyable experience from. These obscure / indie games seem to fit that mold often for me these days. I still like some major AAA games, but it's cool to get play so many unique, shorter, artier games as well.
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Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. For both the shorter time and the more imaginative approaches, I really like what some indie games offer. There's a lot of junk, of course, but there is plenty of really interesting work being done by talented people.
I feel the same. I'll put in some time for Fallout, but most of the time now, I prefer short spurts like 10 minute shooter matches, playing matches of NHL and such. I'd rather commit to an hour playing 6 CoD matches, or 3 NHLs, than 1 RPG drive for an hour which probably gets you almost nowhere.
For sure. Indies really don't get enough credit. I think it's more of a generation thing. Last gen everyone raved about 360 arcade when it was just a bunch of indie games. They were really good games though. This gen the PS4 gets the rap of being the indie console and somehow it's a negative. I don't get it. A great game is a great game. I love having that balance of big budget games and smaller indie games.
I didn't like The Fall much. Just played a little and stopped. The story setup was interesting -- you're an AI combat suit, and the guy inside you is unconscious and badly wounded. You're trying to get help. I just didn't like the controls and the mechanics of it. It's the old-fashioned adventure game mechanic where you pick stuff up to combine with other stuff so you can open a gate so you can pick more stuff up to combine with other stuff so you can open another gate and .... I don't know, I just don't have the patience for that. Controls seemed kind of clunky, too.
It did have some interesting story beats, but I didn't like the old-style adventure game mechanics.
It did have some interesting story beats, but I didn't like the old-style adventure game mechanics.
There was an indie game that had a cool trailer. Sci-fi/post apocolyptic-ish. Kind of resembled The Fall or The Swapper, but it's neither of those. The trailer probably came out in 2014.... I forget.
You guys know which game it could be?
You guys know which game it could be?