Oxenfree

Prepare to be creeped out – in a good way

$4.99 Developer Night School Studio, nightschoolstudio.com Platform iPhone/iPad Requirements iOS 9.1 or later

Teenagers are total idiots. Everyone knows this except teens themselves – which is why it’s always so tempting to yell at the screen while watching horror movies. Oxenfree’s band of angsty adolescents heads off to a deserted tourist island to spend the night drinking and frolicking. So far, so meh – but then they start messing about with radio frequencies, and things begin to get weird.

The bulk of the game has you controlling blue-haired sass-merchant Alex, helping her to navigate the paths of Edwards Island by dragging a finger across your screen, selecting dialog options, and occasionally fiddling about with your radio to tune into Ghost FM. She’s accompanied by new stepbrother Jonas, and between them the pair have enough issues to keep Dr. Phil busy for quite some time.

The dialog is especially well-written, with verbal jousting that feels naturalistic and choices that rarely appear to be obviously funneling you to a particular conclusion. Different outcomes are possible, but everything unfurls organically enough that you won’t suspect where the branching points are.

The result is immersive and atmospheric – so much so that we genuinely found ourselves squealing out loud at our iPad in heightened moments of creepy, delicious terror. We could have done with a swig from Ren’s hip flask at times.

While there’s very little in the way of actual puzzling to be done here, the game certainly rewards exploration; there’s a ton of backstory on offer that you’ll only uncover through hunting down optional extras. It also means there’s replay value after your first run.

Thrilling, chilling, and surprisingly tender, Oxenfree takes a setting and characters that could easily feel hackneyed, and skillfully convinces you to genuinely invest in them – all the while keeping you in a state of low-level dread. We can’t remember the last time we were this glued to an iOS game.

the bottom line. The most compelling horror game on iOS since The Room’s first installment.

Your choices of response are thankfully more nuanced than simply “happy” or “rude.”

The game’s dark look is perfect for making you feel unsettled.