Dang. 8 years ago TODAY, we were crossing all our digits getting ready to launch the game into the world. Only a year and a half earlier, we weren’t a company, or even a team. Most of us were strangers 18 months earlier, and I’m so grateful that our game is what brought all of these cool folks into my life.
Today is the 8 year anniversary of OXENFREE, and your passion for the game is why we were able to create OXENFREE II (which is awesome and you should play if you haven’t yet). In retrospect it all seems stupidly simple; we dove headlong into a game design and story that were intuitively inspiring. We didn’t overthink it, hunted down like-minded folks with crazy skills, stuck them in a box in Glendale California, and hammered on architecting a tiny, scary world. We argued a lot, but over the little things, which felt a lot healthier than the alternative. It was always about getting the game and its world just right, and we had so much fun doing it.
Night School closed out 2023 with no shortage of cool news! OXENFREE II made a ton of end of year lists, and the voice of Riley, Liz Saydah, was nominated for Best Acting in a Game by the New York Video Game Critics Circle. The USS Kanaloa might not be treating the residents of Camena too nicely these last years, but it’s given us more than we could’ve dreamed of back in 2016. Thank you!
Also, it’s been awhile since we did a community Q&A (here’s the last one) and we’re going to do that again all week long. If you have a burning question about one of our games, send it to us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or in this form. We’ll pick a few good ones to answer each day until Jan 22.
-Sean