Oxenfree is 2016’s indie darling that’s oozing with charm, atmosphere, and supernatural escapades. These conversations feel like natural conversations teenagers would have, not something staged to simply drive the narrative forward.Īll of this is placed in a world that’s filled with incredibly well-hidden collectibles, all wrapped up in a delicate, watercolor art style. If someone is being an ass, you can call ’em out on it, though it might have some more long-term repercussions than them being immediately pissed at you. You don’t have to be the nice girl all the time just because they’re your friends.
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Oxenfree’s real pull comes in the form of engaging, believable dialogue choices that affect the way the game plays out, as well as the ending you’ll get. Finally solving a puzzle will have you feeling like some sort of genius, and it’s exactly this feeling that’ll have you moving onto the next one and clocking in an extraordinary number of hours into it. You’ll be scrawling notes, staring at the same screen for hours on end, and contemplating just turning it off and forgetting about it, but you never actually will. There’s a total of over 500 puzzles littered across the island, all of which will require you to utilize the skills you’ve learned in previous ones and then further build upon them. It makes for a neat artificial learning curve of sorts and helps to guide players into the experience, before really upping the ante with some of the toughest environmental puzzles we’ve come across.
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And it just so happens that it’s down to you to solve said puzzles so you can regain your memory and find your way home. Released back in January by Jonathon Blow and his team at Thekla Inc, The Witness drops players onto an abandoned island filled with vibrant colors and an abundance of head-scratching puzzles. The Witness is an astounding accomplishment in game design and will no doubt go down as one of the greatest puzzle games to have graced our consoles. Boss battles become a culmination of everything you’ve learned up until that point so far, and finally defeating one led to one of the most rewarding moments I’ve had in 2016. Learning enemy patterns is just as important as using your weapons and abilities to exploit them, requiring fast thinking and expert execution to take them down. When you do put this into action, the game is just as satisfying as it is challenging.
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Instead, you’ll sit there and evaluate every single scenario until you’ve visualized the perfect solution in your head.
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You see, Hyper Light Drifter never feels unfair if you meet an untimely demise. It’s a little daunting at first, but as you head off into the great unknown, mastering your abilities and dying countless times in the process, Hyper Light Drifter’s magic starts to shine. Instead, you’re dropped into its beautifully stylized world and left to piece everything together on your own. It doesn’t hold you by the hand and tell you where to go or what to do, either. Hyper Light Drifter doesn’t have fancy voice acting.