I didn't find Oxenfree's story interesting at all. In fact, despite this being a story game, I felt like there was very little story to discover and what was happening could accurately be inferred not even halfway through the game, so I was left wondering why I was even playing when I had no curiosity about the plot. At the end of the game, when there is a short breakdown of how your actions affected the outcome of the story, I was confused by the results I got because they felt like the opposite of what I had been fighting for the entire game (ie. always picking the nicest dialog options with a certain character the game wants me to dislike and then being told that they hate me). Generally it felt like I had no effect on the story and the ending was unsatisfying and didn't exactly tie into any of the choices the game let me make, which is unacceptable for such a linear game with very few options.

In addition to the sound design issues mentioned by many other reviewers, there were numerous times in my short play through where multiple songs or multiple lines of dialog played at once. The walking controls are sort of awkward or clunky which is unfortunate for a walking simulator game. The few puzzle elements felt like they just existed to punctuate the long, repeated journeys from point A to B or B to A while listening to dialog. This game doesn't have a strong story or strong gameplay, so I'm not sure what the point of it is.

Got about 20 minutes in and quit. This game has major sound/dialogue problems. The voice acting is excellent, but unfortunately you'll never get to hear it; the music drowns out the voices and there is no way to adjust it. Additionally, sometimes you'll get the loud music PLUS character dialogue PLUS radio sounds with no way to focus on any one thing. There's a subtitle option, but they just...don't work?

Furthermore, your character's dialogue responses are timed and missable quick-time events that always come in the middle of other characters' dialogue, cutting them off. So your options are A) miss their dialogue, or B) miss your dialogue. Every time. Bring on the clown award or whatever, but this is all simply unworkable for a story- and character-driven game. You take away the words, and there's not a whole lot left.

This is one of those games I wish there was a middle ground between whether to recommend or not. It nails the creepy moments when they happen and quite a few of the moments made me go "ooo!" out load, so that's good.

The gameplay though is clunky AF. The dialogue progesses by clicking the choice you want, and there were multiple times the hit box wasn't correct for the choice, and because dialogues are timed, it would fade out and Alex would say nothing. Super frustrating.

Tbh, maybe it's just because I'm 30, but the dialogue just wasn't hitting. I don't know what teens talk like that. It was all very trope-y and by the end, I hated all of the characters. They were all annoying. So yeah, I guess that does kinda push this into the "not recommend" area, as this is a very dialogue heavy game. I guess I'm just disappointed because I see this game recommended constantly. Ah well, can't all be winners.