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Maggie Adler, a radio operator and code maker whose letters fill Alex (and you the player) in on the full tragic backstory, spent the last of her days wishing for a second chance too-she blames herself for the sinking of the submarine, first and foremost, but in the process of trying to communicate with the ghosts and fix it, her best friend (possible lover?) got sucked into the void and was never seen or heard of again. Which is terrible and terrifying, but given that their lives were unfairly ripped away from them and they were sucked into a radiation void or whatever, you can kind of understand their reasons for wanting a second chance. It’s a bit of both here, but… mostly the former, because these spirits-the crew of a submarine sunken accidentally by friendly fire-are intent on coming back to the land of the living by anchoring themselves in the bodies of Alex’s friends. Ghosts, obviously, form a neat metaphor for the lingering presence of grief in whatever form they come, whether it’s horrifying or heartbreaking.

There are two elements in Oxenfree that take away the permanence of death, both as freaky and fun as the other: time loops and ghosts. Alas, if only we could go back in time and stop that fatal accident from happening… This is definitely the case for the heroine of Oxenfree, Alex, whose older brother drowned some time before the game’s story begins, leaving a gaping emotional gap in her-and others’-lives. A DBB more often symbolises a death of stability, the loss of a protective anchor that makes the world without it scary, unpredictable, and raw. The Dead Big Brother trope is the logical opposite of the Dead Little Sister-where a DLS often kicks off manpain of some variety it also symbolises a death of innocence, as these characters are very rarely to blame for their death and their adorable, pure spectre haunts the protagonist for the rest of the story.

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