AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Oxenfree i spy answers8/25/2023 You can kind of roleplay with these various drinks. So the way that the drinking system works - it really is like an augment to your dialogue. But in addition to that, we wanted to add this whole drinking system. We want to keep the branching dialogue in real time because we know it works - we have a set of tools that we’ve built on we can continue to iterate on that. But we haven’t thrown the baby out with the bath water. So there’s not a single system in the game that we haven’t rethought or added to. SK: Where we landed was we wanted to take all the things that we thought we did well on Oxenfree and change them and build on top of them. Polygon: How are you implementing these lessons from Oxenfree into Afterparty ? It’s just things that now we have distance from the game, we can learn from them and build on top of them. yeah, I don’t know that I would say that we would change those things. I think that it’s a little bit slower, and there were a few bugs when we shipped related to how you move through the physical space that were a little frustrating. So that would be one of them.Īnd then the other one: If we had more time, I think we would’ve made navigation feel more enjoyable. But it certainly didn’t give the feel that we were hoping for. ![]() At best, they maybe guessed what it intended to do. We wanted it be like these characters are all changing their opinions of each other and how cool is that that it’s not just them changing their opinions of the player - like other games do - but they’re all thinking different things about each other and that will manifest later in the game. I think we were a little too opaque with that one because nobody understood what the hell. One of the things we did, though, was also add those little thought bubbles that show up over the NPCs whenever something of interest to that character is spoken in the game or an event happens. One of things that we wanted to do was be really opaque about how the dialogue system worked and not show players much of what was going on under the hood, and just make it feel like this organic experience of moving through this world. I mean, there’s things that we want to improve for our next stuff. Polygon: On the flip side of that, what do you think are the shortcomings of that project? Are there things you wish you could change? It’s not a thing I can really put my finger on, other than spending six hours here feels good and cool. That is another one where I feel like there’s this intangible thing of the merging of Heather Gross’s art style and music that I just wanna spend time in that space. I also look back at the merging of the visual aesthetic and the sound design and music that came up with. We made a game that does make you feel as though you’re Alex and you get to telegraph your own version of yourself into that character and play through that night in a way that feels pretty naturalistic. Now having some distance from the game - I actually booted it up the other day because I played it in a while - there is this detachment that I have from it now where I can start to look at it more as a player. That’s what we, essentially, spent all our effort on. Sean Krankel: The primary goal for us - even before we knew what that story was going to be - was to make a story game where there were no cutscenes and where the control was never taken away from the player at any point. ![]() Polygon: What do you think were the successes of Oxenfree ? ![]() It’s a game about two best friends, Milo and Lola, who die, go to hell and challenge the devil to a drinking match in an effort to save their souls from eternal damnation.īelow, I catch up with Krankel to talk about Oxenfree two years later, Afterparty, writing teenagers, what people drink in hell, and the lessons his team’s learned over the past four years. Robot mobile game and porting Oxenfree to seemingly everything with a screen, the team is working on its next game, Afterparty, set to release in 2019. Released for PC and Xbox One in January 2016, the B-grade horror movie-inspired game found a large audience that connected with its characters, relating to the organic dialogue and storylines of the five-person cast.īut, as Krankel points out, Night School isn’t the team making Oxenfree anymore. In his head, he says, it’s still weird to not be the studio just making the company’s first game, Oxenfree. In his head, he says, it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. Sean Krankel, founder and CEO of development team Night School Studio, sounds surprised when I tell him his company is nearly four years old.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |