![]() ![]() “So we started to do some research…actually there are a bunch of de-commissioned military islands off the coast. And there were actual Japanese subs getting extremely close to the shore. And one, which is not talked about very much, but one fired a rocket into a Little League field in Oregon in like 1942 or '43 at night, and luckily nobody was hurt, but that got really close. So we thought, ‘I wonder if we take some of those true events and some of the things that were happening in that time and put our kids in a story that is dealing with some of the ripple effect of that and tell it in a supernatural way.’” “It feels like ancient history to most people, but in reality, 1943 is not that long ago at all. Of course, story is only one part of Oxenfree. “We definitely know that we're standing on shoulders a bit and using things that they've perfected over the last few years,” Krankel says, “and we kind of went, ‘Okay, well, let's not try to completely redefine those things, but let's try to find ways that our studio and our mindset can improve on it or modify it.’” Gameplay is just as important and, in a genre that has become synonymous with Telltale Games, pushing narrative gameplay forward became a big goal for Night School. ![]() Part of the way Oxenfree tries to improve the adventure game experience is by blending exploration and conversation. “The first big one was when you look at those games or a lot of branching games, the moment of actual communication is very divorced from the rest of the gameplay,” Krankel explains. “So it's usually like, I'm walking around, I'm solving a puzzle, I'm doing things, doing whatever, and then I walk into a trigger, and now suddenly I'm watching this cutscene where there's subtitles, but I'm choosing from these subtitles. And that's fine, that's a great, perfectly fine, more passive experience. ![]() But we were like, ‘The biggest challenge that might be cool for us to try to overcome is just marrying those two things,’ and going, "All right, let's do something more naturalistic where the player doesn't ever get taken out of the ‘gameplay’ and put into a cutscene. Those two things will just go together like chocolate and peanut butter.’ But in reality, it became a massive challenge” “On the surface, we felt was a pretty simple thing, like, ‘Oh, it'll be like Limbo and The Walking Dead mixed together. The Night School team was forced to overcome challenges with how to pace dialogue, and making sure vital narrative points weren’t lost without taking agency away from the player. ![]()
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