When the dialogs become mechanical

Sean Krankel details the details of the realization of 'Oxenfree', a graphic adventure in the conversations are the key

  It affirmed Warren Spector, creator of classics like 'System Shock' or 'Deus Ex', a few minutes before: "The dialogues in the videojuegos hardly have changed from the Eighties". The designer, who this Saturday has been interviewed on the stage of the Fun & Serious Game Festival, does not lack reason but there are small studies that are trying to take steps forward. This is the case of Sean Krankel, co-founder of Night School Studio, a small developer based in California who has published 'Oxenfree'.


  "It has always given us the feeling that the games and the stories that are told in them actually work separately," explained Krankel during his speech at the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao. "We wanted to try the narrative in a different way and deal with that problem, it was about making a game in which the mechanics were at the service of the story."

And that is precisely what 'Oxenfree' does, which in the style of the new graphic adventures as 'The Walking Dead', Telltale Games, take the dialogues as the main mechanics for the game to advance. "Usually," Krankel recalls, "the mechanics can be understood as the toys that one plays with and usually consist of attacking, jumping or running, in this case, we think that our toy should be communication." So things, unlike other games in which the mechanics are first established and then the story is already incorporated, "here everything had to be rooted".

Films like 'Poltergeist', 'Cuenta conmigo' or 'Los Goonies' and series like 'Freaks and Geeks' were the base inspiration of the story they wanted to tell. "This type of friend gangs adventures had not been explored so much in the games and we thought it could be fine, we did not want a shooting game," says the co-founder of the studio.

In effect, the game follows closely a group of five teenagers who travel by ferry to an island to spend a night among friends. The player plays the role of Alex, who is accompanied to the islet by his half-brother Jonas and Ren, his mere friend. Two more girls wait there: Nona and Clarissa. Soon something supernatural will happen that will start an adventure that actually deals more with the relationship between these five friends than with the trigger and always with conversations as the engine and support of the narrative.

In fact, as explained by the head of Night School Studio, the title script has more than 1,800 pages for a game that lasts about three hours. "We had to work with the concept 'Pre-mortem', which is to think and plan everything that could go well or wrong during the development of the adventure and from there to write the dialogues," he says. In this sense, over the head of Alex are drawing sandwiches with possible dialogues so that the player can continue to explore the scenarios without stopping talking. Krankel says it was very important to also have the opportunity to remain silent and, although he confesses that sometimes it is strange, they have created an achievement for those who complete the title without speaking.

In this sense, the artistic and visual design has been very important. Developed in 2D, the team decided to move the plane a lot so that all the characters and dialogs of Alex could enter the screen. The result is precious and has that disquieting and supernatural halo of the films of the eighties that with so much style has recreated 'Stranger Things'. And it is already pointed Samuel Molina, by some more known by his nick Fukuy, during the presentation of the conference: "Playing 'Oxenfree' is the closest thing to see a chapter of the series."