She sounds so good to me

I don’t know why it’s called Oxenfree. I really don’t. There aren’t even any oxen.

If you haven’t played it: I’d really recommend playing it. It’s hard to justify not trying it out. Oxenfree is short, but completely packed with rich dialogue and characters who feel real. It puts so much care into story and interactions, and so much of it is story and interactions, that I’d rather recommend playing than spoiling anything.

I toiled over how to present this, you know. I went into the game blind and the introduction of–well, I’ve already spoiled it. I’ve already spoiled that there aren’t any oxen in the game. It’s a total scandal.

Simply put, that one thing that makes Oxenfree one of my favorites is an element I wasn’t aware of from the get-go. I wouldn’t say it’s a spoiler exactly, considering it’s written on the Steam page, but the reveal is much better if you don’t know what’s coming. Thus, I recommend playing the first 20 minutes? 30 minutes? That should be enough time to see what I’m talking about.

To talk about Oxenfree, I want to not talk about Oxenfree. I want to talk about horror movies.

I have a complicated relationship with horror movies. I’m not a huge fan in practice, but I like it in theory. I tried to watch Evil Dead with a friend, tapped out a quarter way through, and scoured the wiki page to sate my curiosity. Repeat every year with a different horror movie. So on paper, yes I’m a horror fan. But put it on the screen and no, no I am not. I wish I could be, but I can’t.

So when I say certain ideas or designs anchored in horror are inspiring and transcendent of the genre, I’m speaking as someone who can’t handle or stomach the genre.

I’m talking about the panic-inducing theme song of Jaws; the tock sound Charlie makes to accentuate the stilted, uneasy tone of Hereditary; a little girl saying, “They’re here,” in a movie I have no plans of seeing anytime soon, Poltergeist (guys, it’s cursed, I can’t watch it, it’s cursed). These design choices, coincidentally all auditory, can be recognizable even by people who don’t watch horror movies.

I sound like I’m building up Oxenfree to be this massive horror game hit, but I wouldn’t actually class it as horror. I’m just saying that the game dips a toe in horror every once in a while, and when it does, it’s amazing.

Just to be safe, consider everything from this point on to be a spoiler.

The horror element that transcends the game, that one thing that makes it amazing, is The Sunken. The Sunken is/are an amalgam of ghosts that died in a submarine wreck, a total of 97 people fused into one being. They aren’t a constant presence in the game, but every once in a while they’ll come and steal the show.

It’s hard to tell how your exchanges with them will go or when they’ll show up. The thing that really gets me is how they talk, which might sound weird if you haven’t played the game or don’t remember. Their voices fantastically convey a numb, uncaring tone, as well as the sheer number of people who comprise the entity.

Radio is a huge part of the game and essential for The Sunken to communicate. Something about the radio draws them out in all their triangular glory, and they use it as a voicebox to demand things of you. There’s nothing I like more than listening to them speak but boy, does it make it hard to sleep at night.

Of course, they have other tricks. Things that span multiple playthroughs of the game, and they know you’ll keep coming back.

They talk about if “Leave. Possible.” Or, “Another round,” at the beginning of a playthrough. I don’t remember that happening the first time I played. Do they know they’re in a game?

Granted, I’ve only played twice as of writing this, but I swear different things happened. There were new scenes that I didn’t remember and weird images that would flash across the screen rapidly, both of which scared the pants off of me. But at that point, I was compelled to replay it.

As might be expected, I have a complicated relationship with Oxenfree. I’ve never played another game like it yet although they probably exist. But there is nothing that I’ve met that can come close to The Sunken. The Sunken aren’t just compelling horror antagonists or spooky ghosts–they’re something that once you see and hear, you don’t forget.