THE MAKING OF... OXYEN FREE

How over 30 years of friendship, and a persistent love of ’80s cinema, culminated in a spooky adventure

- MALINDY HETFELD

Most cousins, it’s probably fair to say, aren’t quite as close as Night School co-founders Adam Hines and Sean Krankel. Bound by a shared love of films and games, the two have spent nearly their entire lives together, sharing a dream of making games that is almost as old as their friendship. While Oxenfree wasn’t the first game either worked on, it was the first they’d worked on together.

The road there – as is often the case in the videogame industry – involved many detours. For Hines, in fact, it led through a shoe shop. His graphic novel Duncan The Wonder Dog introduced him to many writers in different industries, but success was by no means an instant thing. His friend Pierre Shorette, then creative director at Telltale, would eventually recruit him (and several of his colleagues) from said shoe shop to work on The Wolf Among Us and Tales From The Borderlands. Krankel, meanwhile, worked at Disney in several roles, eventually becoming game designer at Disney Interactive. When mobile game Where’s My Water? didn’t turn into the IP-encompassing hit Disney had hoped for, the team was laid off. It proved to be a turning point for the two cousins. “We thought that now we couldn’t just complain about our jobs any more, it was time for us to do it,” Krankel laughs.

They took the opportunity to return to an old idea. “Two or three years leading up to 2014, we had this very specific idea for a game where you could move and talk at the same time,” Krankel says. “We just thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if, in