Future Classic

Modern games you'll still be playing in years to come

- Mike Diver

Info » System: PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android » Year: 2016 >> Publisher: Night School Studio/Netflix » Developer: Night School Studio » Key People: Adam Hines, Sean Krankel, Heather Gross, Andrew Rohrmann

Go Deeper » The 2023 release of Oxenfree's sequel, Lost Signals, saw new radio transmissions patched into the original game. These mysterious messages are the voices of the newer title's cultish villains, Parentage.

» While it was nominated for several prestigious industry awards, including at the BAFTAs and Golden Joysticks, Oxenfree only won one for Excellence In Visual Art at the 2016 IGF Awards.

A coming-of-age drama about a group of teens wracked with personal-life anxieties, wrapped around a skintingling, blood-chilling ghost story, Oxenfree is a game that demands close attention on a first and narrative-twisting second playthrough

OXENFREE

THE BACKGROUND Oxenfree is the debut from Night School Studio, founded in 2014 by ex-Telltale Games writer and graphic novelist Adam Hines (The Wolf Among Us, Tales From The Borderlands) and his cousin Sean Krankel, formerly of Disney Interactive. A graphic adventure with (direct-driven) point-andclick-style gameplay and wonderfully organic dialogue interactions, it's up there alongside the best the genre has to offer.

Speaking to Vice in 2015, prior to Oxenfree's launch, Krankel discussed how he and Hines were inspired by Poltergeist, for its general spookiness and how the Steven Spielbergpenned picture uses communication as a way to generate genuine discomfort. The game's makers - including lead artist Heather Gross and composer Andrew Rohrmann (aka scntfc) - also took cues from another cinematic classic, Stand By Me, helping to shape the interactions between the five main characters, young adults facing up to unsettling changes in their regular lives.