We initially encountered 2016’s Oxenfree when we picked up the Switch version for a princely £4. Like most others, we were fully taken in by an atmospheric graphic adventure with an intriguing paranormal mystery impressively written and presented by indie studio Night School. Their next release was the not particularly well received Afterparty, but the lukewarm reaction to this soon persuaded them to return to the world of Oxenfree with a fully fledged sequel.

They were also bought out by Netflix during the game’s development, but don’t hold that against them as the only noticeable side effect from this is the distinct Stranger Things vibe exuded by the title screen and soundtrack. We can’t remember if such a vibe was present in the original as, unless our memory is failing us, its development preceded Netflix’s flagship show.

Oxenfree 2 focuses on a new set of characters, with you controlling Riley. Having just moved back to Oxenfree to start a job placing transmitters around the area for reasons that aren’t worth mentioning, you’re quickly introduced to your old-school walkie talkie and your work colleague for the night, Jacob. After being handed a radio with which to mess around, which will no doubt please fans of the last instalment, weird phenomena clearly related to the nearby Edwards Island, the previous title’s setting, quickly start to manifest.

In case you’re not familiar with the first game, this one contains all the same ingredients in that it mixes graphic adventure sensibilities with quasi open-world 2D platforming. Although the game frequently signposts where you’re supposed to go next, there are collectables in the form of hidden letters dotted around that you can optionally seek out.

One of the biggest problems with the earlier title was the fact that the characters frequently spoke over each other and cut each other off, largely due to the fact that there was a group of them. Now there are only two main characters, this problem has been largely eradicated as much of the interplay is between Riley and Jacob or someone on the walkie.

A new problem arises though in the way that Riley is written and, to some extent, performed. The dialogue choices only hint at what Riley will actually say, but she’s such a spiky ♥♥♥♥♥ that you’ll lose count of the number of times you pick what you expect to be a friendly comment to Jacob only to have her verbally spit in his face. Considering Jacob is a neurotic mess, rather like Woody Allen without the gags, this often feels like kicking a shaking puppy. Although Riley would probably enjoy that.

The game world also doesn’t feel as though it follows its own internal logic, which makes proceedings feel less believable. Riley and Jacob make some pretty impressive leaps of logic to justify pressing on when all hell is breaking loose around them, and you’re expected to believe other plot conveniences such as the fact that the local high school radio station has kids broadcasting all night long.

The walks between story beats also begin to drag. Although Riley and Jacob interact a fair amount, there are still huge swathes of the game where you’re just plodding from A to B. The interactions you can have with an assortment of oddballs on the walkie are diverting but ultimately amount to little in the end, making the game world feel shallower than what came before.

Although we’ve seen it said that Oxenfree 2 is designed to be played by those who aren’t familiar with the original, we would absolutely dispute this. The story and happenings are heavily referential to Oxenfree, and you would lose out on a huge amount of context if you skip straight to the sequel.

One strength that does persist though is the pleasing art and audio design. Although the graphics are simple, they perfectly convey the leafy, Oregon-based fictional town in which the story plays out. Jacob aside, the voice acting is achingly average. The music, however, is masterly in its moodiness.

At this point, you’re probably starting to wonder if Oxenfree 2 is as good as its predecessor. It isn’t, but it also isn’t far off of it in terms of quality. The story, script and overall style come together to provide an enjoyable graphic adventure, albeit one that occasionally stumbles in its pacing and worldbuilding. The finale also somewhat misses the mark, and tries a little too hard to give the impression that it’s deeper than it actually is. That said, fans of the first instalment, which newbies should absolutely play first, will nevertheless find this to be a worthwhile sequel in most respects.

Pros:
Extremely atmospheric synth music // Well written dialogue // Successfully builds on its predecessor // Effective indie art style // Characters don’t talk over each other any more

Cons:
Riley is overly aggressive and not particularly likeable // Leaves a few story threads dangling // Ending isn’t amazing // Too many long and uneventful walks // Some internal logic issues

79% // Good

Despite screenshot functionality being baked into every modern format, there are surprisingly few games around that focus on the humble art of photography. If you were disappointed by Nintendo’s rather pedestrian return to the genre with New Pokemon Snap, this charming little indie game by Swedish developers Something We Made will show you what Nintendo could have achieved with a little more ingenuity.

Set in a black and white isometric world, your journey begins when the nameless protagonist’s ancient grandmother packs you off on a brief but charming journey to find and photograph the legendary Toem for the old crone. Each world gives you access to an event card that tracks the photographic challenges you either stumble upon or are directly given by the local denizens - completing each challenge awards you with a stamp. Collect a defined number of these in each area, and you’ll be awarded a bus ticket unlocking the next world.

You can complete each world completely at your own pace, interacting with the locals and whipping out your camera to photograph whatever you fancy at any point. The graphics are so charming and the controls so intuitive that you’ll find yourself frequently lining up shots just to fill your album for your own sake, with the completion of challenges proving to be a pleasing side effect.

As you progress, you’ll be awarded items of clothing that unlock abilities such as climbing or running faster. You’ll also acquire accessories for your camera, such as a tripod to more easily line up shots and a hooter attachment to scare the crap out of obstructive birds. Once you’ve actually photographed the Toem, the old bag invites you to join her camping on a holiday island. This is essentially an entire post-game world with even more photographic challenges to complete that was patched in as a thank you from the developers for the game having done so well, and contains what can be seen as the true ending.

The only real downsides are two-fold. Firstly, Toem is a fairly short game, but not criminally so. Secondly, the entire world is, for some reason, rendered in black and white. The graphics are excellently drawn, but compromising the beauty of the world in a game specifically about the joys of photographing it is a bizarre choice. Although we have a fairly good idea as to why the developers did this, we don’t think it was a particularly wise decision considering the game looks a little drab in screenshots.

The lack of colour aside, Toem is the most pleasantly relaxing, engaging and downright enjoyable way to spend a few hours with a camera that doesn’t involve leaving the house. The developers certainly deserved every one of the awards they’ve received for this, as much as you deserve to immerse yourself in its wonderfully undemanding world.

Pros:
Charming presentation // Excellent controls with a well-implemented photography mechanic // Relaxing soundtrack // No pressure // Doesn’t outstay its welcome

Cons:
Would have been far more visually pleasing in colour // Occasionally obtuse challenge clues // A map would be nice // Quite short

91% // Outstanding

Set in the late 1800s, around a century prior to the events of the Harry Potter books and films, Hogwarts Legacy opens with you joining the prestigious school of wizarding unusually late as a fifth year. It certainly hits the ground running as, before the first day is over, you witness several unfortunate deaths and get embroiled in a secret mission with Professor Fig to get to the bottom of a secret plot to utilise a form of powerful magic that’s been hidden away for years.

This serves to be the main storyline in a game that soon opens up into a full open world adventure, with several side quests, Hogwarts itself and its surrounding towns and hamlets to explore. The school itself is by far the most impressive location here, which feels recognisably familiar from the source material. Hogwarts is huge and incredibly detailed, providing not only side missions in which to engage but random events to witness. This includes access to a common room unique to your house, which you can choose yourself if you disagree with the sorting hat’s opinion. We can’t imagine too many Mensans will end up anywhere other than Ravenclaw, though.

Hogsmeade, the village which lies just outside of Hogwarts’ grounds, is almost as impressive, providing a huge area full of familiar shops and locations to explore. Outside of these places is, unfortunately, less impressive. There are a lot of open fields which, despite hiding small caves and dungeons, aren’t particularly thrilling to explore. The smaller hamlets are visually pleasing, but again tend to only contain some of the game’s duller side missions and workmanlike-like collectathons.

Speaking of the side missions, these are highly variable in quality. Some are glorified fetch quests, some challenge you to find a huge number of particular things and many involve traversing one of the game’s many dungeons. These dungeons pop up in essentially every location that isn’t in the overworld, and involve linear exploration and combat. These are fine early on, but they’re all incredibly samey and easy to get bored with once you’re a few missions in.

Despite this, some of the side missions are extremely entertaining thanks to the generally excellent standard of writing. The highlight involves a couple of friends in Slytherin, one of whom, Sebastian, is attempting to save his sister from a curse by mastering dark magic. As the game’s morality system was abandoned at some point before release, this serves as a good opportunity to learn the game’s four dark magic spells without any adverse consequences.

This lengthy side quest lasts for much of the game’s 30-40 hour duration, and is in some respects even better than the entertaining main storyline. There are two other similarly expansive side quests, one of which is fair and the other less so.

Outside of this, the game gives you enough breathing room to, should you wish, live the life of a Hogwarts student. Want to be a wannabe Newt Scamander and roam around capturing endangered beasts to keep in your personal pen? You can do that. Want to roam around the school attending classes, drinking in the atmosphere and engaging in broomstick races? You can do that too. Want to drink butterbeer in a pub in Hogsmeade owned by a landlady who sounds like Eddie Izzard? No, us neither, but you still can.

Although character customisation is good in terms of facial design and features, the game’s many rewards for completing quests and discovering chests are essentially items of clothing that slightly improve your stats. Putting aside the fact that almost every item of clothing looks absolutely horrendous (we alternately shuffled around in a quidditch outfit and a Victorian swimming costume, as they were literally the only two outfits that didn’t make our eyes bleed), this loot mentality is made infuriating by the miserly lack of inventory space and the sheer crapness of the interface through which you have to perpetually change clothes and transmogrify them to not look ♥♥♥♥.

Speaking of the interface, you have the option to keep four lots of four spells in a quick access wheel. The problem lies in the fact that you soon unlock more spells than you have slots, and the game’s many environmental puzzles expect you to constantly switch between them.

The visuals are largely glorious, but there’s an annoying haze that’s perpetually present which really dampens the overall effect. The voice acting is also absolutely superb, but some of the voice actors have very obviously been cast as multiple characters as they sound noticeably and distractingly similar.

Hogwarts Legacy makes a few mistakes, but overall achieves what it sets out to do in that you get the opportunity to attend Hogwarts, learn spells, fly broomsticks, embark on a huge adventure and practise your spellcasting on the local cat population by sending them pinging off the walls into the distant horizon. With the sheer quality of the open world on offer along with the faithful design and writing, not to mention judicious application of the corrective community mods available for the PC version, these flaws are largely overcome. Hogwarts Legacy is comfortably the best way to live out your Harry Potter fantasies, and one that’s worth the time of any fan of the source material.

Pros:
Glorious art and music // Spirited voice acting // Design is faithful to the source material // Engaging story // Sebastian’s side missions // Unofficial cat-launching side activity

Cons:
Samey dungeons quickly get repetitive // Some characters sound too similar // Horrendous outfits // Terrible interface and loot management // Sometimes feels like a UN summit // Poor stealth

82% // Very Good

If you, like us, are a massive fan of the Tron universe - a universe to which Disney’s attitude wobbles between apathy and outright disdain - then you’ll no doubt have got rather excited at the arrival of Tron: Identity. Developed by Mike Bithell, who also made indie classic Thomas Was Alone, Identity comes across very much as an indie game through and through.

Essentially a visual novel, the story begins with a Disciple Of Tron - essentially a detective not beholden to the Core - called Query arriving at a massive repository to investigate an explosion. Without even knowing what’s been stolen, your job is to interrogate those inside the repository to get to the bottom of what’s transpired.

Despite the fact you can move around the building at will, the narrative is linear in terms of the order in which you can proceed. Each area consists of a single room, but there’s no animation beyond a pseudo-3D presentation. You can also very occasionally click on a single interaction point in a room to unlock a description in the codex.

The majority of the game is spent talking to the characters, with a few points at which the story will slightly branch depending on a limited number of key decisions. As far as we can tell, the only substantive changes between playthroughs lie in which characters are still breathing come the end credits.

Fortunately, the game is well written in terms of the story it tells. The mystery is intriguing and feels authentic to the Tron universe, although there are a few minor typos and grammatical errors in the text. This is more noticeable than usual as there’s absolutely no voice acting.

Less fortunately, the game is extremely short. There’s an attempt at padding in that there’s a simple recurring minigame which involves matching cards as a means of defragmenting discs, but it’s dull and feels repetitive. These minigames can, thankfully, be skipped with no penalty.

There are a grand total of five areas for you to flit between, and the same number of NPCs to be interrogated. The areas themselves are beautifully drawn, and accompanied by an atmospheric soundtrack that helps to draw you into the Grid. But when you rather quickly reach the climax, it’s hard to feel particularly nourished by what’s essentially a starter.

This is the second visual novel we’ve looked at this month, the other being The Murder Of Sonic The Hedgehog. Like Tron: Identity, that was short and enjoyable. Unlike Tron: Identity, it’s free. For £15, Identity’s lack of voice acting, animation and replayability will leave you feeling shortchanged. For a fiver, this would be much easier to recommend.

Pros:
Faithful aesthetic // Intriguing narrative // Atmospheric music draws you in // Minigames can be skipped // Nice to be back in the Tron universe

Cons:
Very short // Game world feels empty and unpopulated // Anticlimactic conclusion // Boring recurring minigame // No voice acting // Limited sound effects // Far too expensive

67% // Fair

Released as something of a joke to mark April Fool’s Day, The Murder Of Sonic The Hedgehog marks an even bigger departure from the norm than Sonic Frontiers did in that it’s a visual novel. Casting you as a new staff member on a futuristic party train, your job is to ensure that the murder mystery party laid on for Amy Rose’s birthday by Sonic and his gang goes smoothly. Naturally, it doesn’t.

Playing the role of detective, Tails is by your side throughout what is essentially a linear and simple point and click adventure. The usually sharp two-tailed fox fails to notice that Sonic is genuinely hurt, and so proceeds to guide you through interviewing each witness a carriage at a time as if all is running to plan.

Each revelation is preceded by your character pulling out his Game Gear-like device and playing a quick round of an isometrically presented endless runner, for some reason. This gets increasingly challenging as the game progresses, but there are several assist options if you just want to get on with the story.

Speaking of which, the story is fun, if somewhat predictable, but crucially doesn’t outstay its welcome. The clean comic book-style art fits the bill, but don’t expect any real animation to speak of. The music is similarly chirpy, completing what is altogether a pleasingly bright and breezy few hours of entertainment. Sadly though, there’s no voice acting.

If all of this sounds like an ultra-simple and linear version of Phoenix Wright, that’s because it is. With a fun, well-written story and a mildly diverting Sonic minigame thrown in, not to mention the fact that the whole thing is free, The Murder Of Sonic The Hedgehog is well worth a few hours of any Sonic fan’s time. And no, Sonic doesn’t end up on the side of a road with a tyre track running across his stomach.

Pros:
Free // A decent few hours of entertainment // Faithful to the characters // Fun and engaging story // Mildly diverting Sonic minigame included // Nice art and music // Did we mention it’s free?

Cons:
Short // No voice acting or animation // Very simple and linear

75% // Good