![]() ![]() Kids can be spoken to from up to a room away, made to follow you around, or to collect and use various props. ![]() And there are a lot of mechanics: SHOUTing to locate kids, THINKing about people or topics, ASKing kids about people or topics, and ordering kids to perform actions. The game is good at introducing new gameplay mechanics, sometimes through cueing in the prose and sometimes through explicit help messages. The teacher's observations on the naff posters and simplistic kiddie artworks express light cynicism, but his subsequent earnest interactions with the kids show how he can compartmentalise adult thoughts. The descriptions depict a school environment for little kids through an adult's eyes. The layout and presentation of the school building has a realistic logic and a pleasing adventure game aesthetic in terms of the distribution of remarkable features. Also, I don't consider it acceptable to have a parser game say things like: "If that command didn't work, please enter it again," or "It looks like you've completed that part of the walkthrough, but I'm not sure." My guess is the author ran out of development time before IFComp. The tools the game gives the player to do what is being asked of them are underpowered, and there are a lot of bugs and oversights. But with great mechanics must come greater implementation. To successfully marshal them to help you help them rescue each other is the kind of feat which will convince you that you could organise a team of green berets. You can talk to them, order them about separately and have them act as the instruments of puzzle solving for you, which is necessary because the attack has left you too weak to perform any dexterity-demanding tasks. Ollie's ambitious design supports all of the students independently. The source of the threat isn't specified, or ultimately important, at least as far into the game as I reached before giving up, which I did after 145 minutes. #OXENFREE WALKTHROUGH SERIES#Ollie Ollie Oxen Free is a primary school-based adventure of rigourous puzzling in which you play a teacher who must rescue a series of trapped students in the wake of some kind of bombing. (This review originally appeared as a blog post of mine during IFComp 2013.) Overall, a very strong piece, and hopefully it'll be updated to improve its implementation there's a very thoughtful design, great characters, and strong prose in place here, but it could have benefited from more playtesting. ![]() There's some lacking synonyms – STUDENT, STAND ON COUNTER doesn't work, but STUDENT, GET ON THE COUNTER does, for example The game includes a THINK ABOUT verb to recall memories about people and objects, but a lot of the backstory mentions people and things that you can't think about. There aren't that many implemented responses to actions that don't advance the puzzles in one case, an alternate solution I thought was fairly obvious is blocked with what appears to be a generic message. However, still on implementation, it lacks polish. The implementation is very thoughtful – the game provides prompts to suggest any unique or uncommon verbs to you, there's a responsive hint system along with explicit walkthrough instructions, and the puzzles are generally well thought-out, thematically interesting, and sensible. Most of the game is spent rescuing the various students from their respective predicaments, often allowing you to drop one puzzle to go deal with another and come back later, which is always appreciated. Structurally, the game could be called a light puzzlefest. I'm not a parent or a teacher, or a particularly sensitive person even when it comes to depictions of children in dangerous situations, but Ollie Ollie Oxen Free still had me completely floored with the strength of its emotional arc it's really damnably effective at times. The story never stops reminding you that the NPCs you are relying on to be your hands, eyes, and ears in the game world are still children. This set-up would be interesting just in gameplay terms, but Ollie adds to it the strong emotional hook of putting you in the position of an elementary school teacher who has to depend on his students to get everyone out safely after a bombing. #OXENFREE WALKTHROUGH PC#To keep you relying on the game's cast of non-player characters, Ollie presents a PC who is momentarily incapacitated, unable to cope with even the simplest physical tasks. ![]() Ollie Ollie Oxen Free introduces six additional pairs of hands for the player to control, and uses them to tightly integrate the gameplay, plot, and emotional arcs of the story. IF with NPC sidekicks that obey the player's every command often risk appearing redundant, with a second pair of hands that have no plot function. ![]()
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