Video Game / Oxenfree

The cover, showing off the real-time dialogue mechanic.

Oxenfree is an indie game by Night School Studios.

Described as a supernatural thriller and coming-of-age story, the player takes control of protagonist Alex, who is on her way to Edwards Island to enjoy a bash on the beach with her friends and her new stepbrother.

With her brother's death still fresh on her and her friends' mind, Alex prepares for a simple night of partying on the beach, playing silly games and just having fun. But they all get quickly involved with the supernatural when tuning an old radio seems to unleash something otherworldy over the island.

The game was originally released on January 15th 2016 for Windows, OS X, and Xbox One. It gained a release on the Playstation 4 on May 31st 2016, which added a New Game Plus mode that was then patched onto the other platforms' releases for free. A Switch version was released on October 6th 2017.

You can find the first and second teaser trailer for the game here.

In April 2021, the sequel Oxenfree II: Lost Signals was announced and said to take place five years after the events of this game. It got released in July 2023.

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Tropes found in Oxenfree

• Affably Evil: The ghosts seem relatively harmless, even when they start possessing various members of the group. When they interact with Alex while possessing Clarissa, they act rather friendly.
• Alone with the Psycho:
  • Alex is forced to play a twisted scavenger hunt with the ghosts while in Maggie Adler's house.
  • The ultimate confrontation has her alone with them inside the dimensional rift, trying to free Clarissa and seal the ghosts away.
• Anachronism Stew: The timeline of the nuclear submarine is off. The game states it was sunk in 1943, while it was testing out its nuclear reactor. During the second world war, the only nuclear project going on in the United States was the development of the atomic bomb. Said bomb was completed in 1945 and used every bit of fissionable material in existence, along with practically every top allied scientist being involved in its development. The possibility that the US was creating nuclear reactors for submarines two years earlier is ludicrous.
• And I Must Scream:
  • The ghosts are trapped and are experiencing their own deaths and that of the universe over and over, as they are stuck in a dimensional rift outside of the universe's flow of time. This is why they desperately want to possess a human body to escape.
  • Implied over the course of the game and pretty much set in stone at the end is that Alex sealing the ghosts away to set her friends free has trapped her in the same location as the ghosts, forcing her to relive the game's events.
• Arc Symbol: Triangles. Small triangles are indicators of where the best reception to contact the ghosts is, and tuning the radio into the correct frequency causes the triangles to extend until they form a larger triangle.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Though the ghosts of the USS Kanaloa crew have been stopped and Alex and her friends are free to go, it's heavily implied that Alex has trapped herself in the same dimensions as the ghosts, reliving the events of the island.
  • New Game Plus gives the player an option to avoid the game's whole events by having Alex, Ren, and Jonas forego heading to the island and instead getting pizza back on the mainland. This prevents Alex from being trapped in the time loop, but it also means that Ren and Nona will not become a couple at that point, and that Michael's death remains unchanged. And the ghosts imply that this is merely a version of Alex that has avoided the loop, but that many more of her are trapped.
• Brother–Sister Team: Alex and her stepbrother Jonas are the main focus of the narrative, with a good relationship between them in the ending have her note that they stopped adding the 'step' before introducing their new sibling. If the player brings Michael back to life, he retroactively replaces Jonas in the narrative, making him and Alex a biological brother-sister team.
• But Thou Must!: The player has to tune the radio and thereby free the ghosts to leave the beach cave again. If they attempt to return to the cave entrance with Jonas after finding him, Alex realizes that the entrance caved in behind them.
• Cassandra Truth: Lampshaded by Jonas, when Alex tells Nona about the cause of all the supernatural things happening on the island to them that night. She starts off skeptical, but Jonas backs Alex's story up and asks Nona to just 'skip to the believing us part'.
• Cell Phones Are Useless: Cellphones, and standard radio stations, have no reception on Edwards Island.
• Collection Sidequest: Using the WAL-radio to find all thirteen of Maggie Adler's letters, and tuning the radio into the frequencies to hear the stories of all the Anomalies.
• Coming of Age Story: The game feels this way, following a group of teenagers that are approaching their last few years in highschool, and particularly Alex and Clarissa coming to terms with the death of a beloved person just a year ago.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: Should the player take too long to tune the radio into the right frequency during story-progression moments, the characters accompanying Alex will start getting annoyed.
• Deal with the Devil: The ghosts offer one to Alex. They will let her and her other friends go, if they get to keep Clarissa's body for possession.
• Demonic Possession: The ghosts can gain control over a person's body.
• Deserted Island: Edwards Island is a long-abandoned military base and had only one resident living still remain there, until they died and leaving the island completely uninhabited.
• Electromagnetic Ghosts: The ghosts interfere with radio waves and also use them to communicate with humans.
• Everyone Knows Morse: Averted, as several spots on the island can have the player hear morse code playing on certain radio frequencies. They play out, but no character comments on or translates them, so it's up to the player knowing or looking up what they mean. They are Anna's messages from the ghost dimension to Maggie Adler.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The entire game takes place over less than 12 hours.
• Failure-to-Save Murder: Clarissa feels this way about Michael's death, believing that Alex doing nothing to save Michael from drowning is as good as having actively killed him.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Jonas and Alex or Alex and Clarissa can become this over the course of the game, depending on the player's choices during dialogues.
• Foreshadowing: Throughout the game, Alex gets caught in a time loop and retreats previous steps, but she's the only one that immediately notices it going on. It's implied and made clear in some endings that the entire game is already a loop that Alex is caught in, reliving the events on the island.
• Friend or Foe?: The USS Kanaloa submarine's sinking was caused by friendly fire, commanded by Maggie Adler because she misinterpreted the signal she got.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Alex, and the player, recalling the events of the game is a key element for New Game Plus.
• The Ghost: The biological parents of Alex and Jonas are mentioned quite a bit, but they are never seen in the game. It's only clear that Alex's parents got divorced over their son's death, and that Jonas' mother died of illness, before their respective mother and father remarried.
• Golden Ending: Subverted, though it certainly looks like the player can achieve what seems to be the best possible outcome for all characters. Ren and Nona have become a couple, and Michael never died, nor break off his relationship with Clarissa, meaning that those two are still together. And Alex and Jonas are good friends, despite not being stepsiblings. But since Michael is alive, this means that Alex went to the island and ended up trapped in the time loop, resetting the events to the beginning of the night.
• Government Conspiracy. Jonas theorizes that the island is actually a still-functioning base for a government mind control experiment. He's partly right in that the government is involved, insofar as Maggie Adler's actions while part of the US army are the cause of the game's events, but otherwise wrong as mind control is not part of anything.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: The time loops Alex finds herself in at times are extremely short versions of this, retreating only a few steps back. It's also heavily implied and eventually made clear that the entire game is one giant loop Alex is trapped in.
• Hell Gate: Edwards Island is full of them, and the gates are opened by tuning into the right radio frequency.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Alex can choose to trap themself in the same dimension as the ghosts, to ensure that the others can escape the island safely. Due to the implied nature of the game, this likely already happened before the game even starts.
• I Am Legion: The ghosts talk like this when posessing a human's body and overall have difficulty holding onto their individuality.
• Idiot Ball: Jonas holds one tightly in his hands when he decides to wander into a dark cave on a mysterious island he's never been on before. And it's one of two events that cause the supernatural events to occur.
• Interface Screw: Aside from the visual glitches during time loops and similar, there are a few moments where the environment gets turned upside-down and the controls are switched.
• Jerkass Ball:
  • Despite getting on relatively well with him in the beginning of the game, partway through the night has Jonas begin to blame Ren for all the troubles with the ghosts. The two start arguing over this, leading to Alex needing to step in to play mediator or double-down on blaming one or the other, or even herself for everything.
  • Based on the player's choice, Alex can be needlessly antagonizing to everyone in the group for the whole game. There's even an achievement for destroying all of her friendships.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: There's only a few instances in the game where all five characters are together, and often end up separating into groups of two or three on their own volition or because supernatural shenanigans teleport them away.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Some of the characters experiences moments from their past while possessed by the ghosts.
• Many Spirits Inside of One: This happens to any human body possessed by the ghosts, simply because of the sheer quantity of spirits all attempting to inhabit one space.
• Meaningful Name: Oxenfree is short for 'olly olly oxen free', an old phrase from a children's game popularized by Peter Pan. The ghosts have devolved to the mentality of children because of their being stuck inside of an alternate dimension for so long, they even have Alex play games like Hangman and I Spy with them.
• Mental Time Travel: What seems to be when Alex gets transported back to see Michael.
• Military Alphabet: The location clues for the Adler Letters have Maggie Adler spell out short words in the NATO phonetic alphabet. Though 'sierra' gets consistently mispronounced as 'sienna'.
• Morton's Fork: The two 'best' endings exist on opposite ends of the fork. Alex can prevent Michael's death by drowning and have him alive to join them on the island, but she will be trapped inside of the loop alongside the ghosts. Or she can save herself, or a version of herself, by never going onto the island and not getting trapped in a loop, though Michael will remain dead.
• Multiple Endings: There are a few different ways to end the game, though the main difference comes in the epilogues and how Alex's relationship with everyone fares out, based on how the player had her respond over the game.
  • One ending has Alex refuse to sacrifice Clarissa to the ghosts and she closes the dimensional gate to seal them away. This allows her friends to be free and safe, but Alex remains behind in the same dimension as the ghosts, and all but stated to be stuck in a loop of the game's events.
  • A similar ending has Alex not sacrifice Clarissa to the ghosts, nor close the gate, but having read the Adler Letters lets her mention a Kanaloa sailor's name, and seems to pacify the ghosts somewhat, with Alex's whole group on the ferry on their way home... only for Ren to repeat himself, implying the loop Alex is stuck in.
  • Another ending has Alex choose to agree to leave Clarissa's body with the ghosts, and she escapes alongside the rest of the group. Only for the time loop nature of the game to catch up to her.
  • An ending exclusive to New Game Plus mode has Alex find radios all over the island that tell her to not come here and avoid the party at the beach. She manages to convince Ren and Jonas to not go, leaving her to avoid being trapped in the time loop of the island, but it's made clear that this is merely one version of Alex that avoided this fate, and that many other Alexes are still stuck.
  • Some of the biggest epilogue differences is if the player managed to get Ren and Nona to become a couple and preventing Michael's death, as well as potentially saving his relationship with Clarissa.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • The ghosts appear to feel guilty when Alex closes the gate and intentionally traps herself in the same dimension as them to save the others.
  • The driving force behind Maggie Adler's actions. They were the cause for the sinking of the USS Kanaloa and their ensuing attempts to pacify the ghosts and tuning into their dimension to help them caused their best friend Anna Shea to disappear as well.
• New Game Plus: Added in the PS4 release of the game, and was then patched into the other versions. The player goes through the game again, with Alex remembering the events of the previous playthrough. This mode featured a few new locations and a completely different ending.
• Nobody Poops: Averted, as Jonas has to relieve his bladder during one point of the game.
• Notice This:
  • Objects that can be interacted with have a small, white circle above them.
  • The Adler Letters themselves appear as sparkles in their location.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: A frequent effects while playing the game, it's used to illustrate the radio static interference and the warping of space and time.
• Only One Name: The teenagers are only known by their first names. Adam Hines admits that the crew never got around to giving them last names and says it still haunts him to this day.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The ghosts encountered are not just the ephemeral remains of the USS Kanaloa crew, they are stuck in a separate dimension where time repeats itself.
• Radio Voice: Justified, as the ghosts communicate through old radio frequencies.
• Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic:
  • Averted, and an oft-mentioned aspect of the game. The dialogue is very natural and believeable, the characters will talk over each other, use the wrong word or mispronounce them, stutter, trail off, etc.
  • Played straight with the ghosts, who are cryptic in their short sentences, but very articulate. Given their nature, they likely had time to rehearse their lines to the point of perfection.
• Reality Warper: The ghosts can have items appear in a spot they weren't in before, mess with the perception of humans and have them 'see' events that aren't real, and transport them to other locations on the island and time itself, if Alex being sent back to her time with Michael is any indication.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: When a human is possessed by the ghosts, their eyes glow red.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory:
  • Played with when it comes to Alex in the time loops, as she immediately notices when they occur, while the others take a while to catch up or mention a vague sense of déja vu.
  • Played straight when Alex sacrifices Clarissa to the ghosts. She's the only one that remembers Clarissa ever existed.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The player can prevent Michael's death by choosing the right dialoge options near the end of the game.
• Sequel Hook: Later updates to the game added enigamtic radio signals hinting at events from Oxenfree II: Lost Signals.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Given the implication of the game, the whole thing is a needless waste of time on Alex's, and the player's, part because she's stuck in a time loop and has to relive the events on Edwards Island. In fact, the 'first playthrough' the player does is already implied to just be one more loop.
• Shout-Out:
  • Shout-Out Theme Naming: The studio has revealed that Alex and her friends are named after characters from Nickelodeon shows:
    • Alex is named after Alexandra Louise “Alex” Mack, the protagonist of The Secret World of Alex Mack.
    • Ren is named after Ren Höek, one of the titular characters of The Ren & Stimpy Show.
    • Jonas is named after Jonas Cutter, the real name of Stanley Crane, from the Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode "The Tale of Cutter's Treasure".
    • Nona is named after Nona F. Mecklenberg, the new friend of Little Pete from The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
    • Clarissa is named after Clarissa Darling, the titular protagonist of Clarissa Explains It All.
  • When Ren asks for clarification about the island being haunted, he mentions 'elevators on their periods', a shout out the scene of the elevator releasing a river of blood in The Shining.
  • Some of the achievements are shout outs by name.
    • It's A Me, obtained by jumping over the chasm in the woods.
    • "This House Is Clear", obtained by finishing through the game once.
    • I'm The Firestarter, obtained by playing through the game in a way that alienates Alex from the others and destroys her relationships with them.
• Sinister Geometry: Glowing triangles appear throughout the island, are always out of place and a sign that the ghosts can be contacted in that spot.
• Spooky Photographs: The ghosts can be seen in some of the photographs taken by the characters.
• They Died Because of You: Clarissa's dislike towards Alex stems from her blaming Alex for her brother's death.
• Terms of Endangerment: The ghosts refer to the protagonists as 'dolls' and calling them adorable, while they intend to possess their bodies and play games with them.
• Title Drop: Played with, as the ghosts say 'All the out's in free', which is an older version of the Olly Oxenfree phrase.
• Time Travel: Alex experiences flashbacks and time loops though the former turns out to actually involve being sent through time, which allows her to alter the events.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Edwards Island is an abandoned island that was once a military base. It now houses ghosts from a sunken submarine, which are intent on escaping the dimension they are stuck in.
• Unfortunate Names: Harden Tower is named after major Richard Harden, which Jonas points out to be named 'Dick' Harden. The tour guide station mentions that the colonel did go by colonel Richard 'Dick' Harden, much to Jonas' delight.
• Un-person: Can occur to Clarissa in the end, should the player decide to have Alex sacrifice them.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • The ghosts tell Alex that she's the cause for everything, even if she never intended for things to go so awry. Her tuning into the radio frequency allowed the ghosts back onto the island and mess with her friends.
  • Maggie Adler also caused majority of the events, as their actions caused the death of the USS Kanaloa crew and their well-intended attempts to appease the ghosts simply made things worse.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • During the game of Truth-Or-Slap, the player can have Alex choose to reveal Ren's crush on Nona and gleefully slap him for lying about it, as per the rules of the game.
  • The player can have Alex belittle Jonas over things, blame him for the events of the game, and overall reject him as a stepbrother.
  • The player can choose to have Alex sacrifice Clarissa to the ghosts, in exchange for letting her and the rest of her friends go.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Due to the implied nature of the game, it's possible that Alex sacrificing Clarissa to the ghosts might have backfired and gotten her stuck inside of the loop anyway.
• Walk and Talk: Most conversations in the game are this since the player's control isn't taken away during dialogue.
• What the Hell, Player?
  • Ren will understandably call Alex out on exposing his crush on Nona during the Truth-Or-Slap game.
  • Should the player have Alex reveal the deal the ghosts offered her of sacrificing Clarissa to the ghosts in exchange for everyone else's freedom, and that she plans to go through with it, the rest of the group with rightfully snap at her for doing something so disgusting and selfish. Nona even goes on a rant that keeps Alex from interjecting anything.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The final scene has Alex narrate over a picture of the group, and how the various members are doing before mentioning that she has to leave to catch the ferry ride to the island, revealing that no epilogue actually happened, and she's back to square one.
• Wild Teen Party: Implied, when Clarissa asks why they are the only ones heading to the island for the annual beach bash and Ren mentions that most of the others are still suffering consequences from a party that took place a few days earlier.
• World of Snark: The whole group can be pretty snarky towards each other.

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