We Are OFK Pushes The Boundaries Of What It Means To Be A Video Game
We Are OFK is a strangely dichotomous experience. In some ways the game feels hypermodern, with its Gen Z cast, up to the minute social mores, and extremely current soundtrack. In others it’s dated, with clunky gameplay, PS3-era graphics, and an episodic release format. It’s complex in its emotions and worldview, but simplistic in its plot and morality. Character voices go places we wouldn’t expect, and narrative goes exactly where we knew it always would. It’s a fresh reinvention of what it means to be a video game, made up of all the things we’ve seen before. It’s past. It’s present. It’s future. It’s We Are OFK.
It reminds me a lot of The Artful Escape, which finished a respectable fourth on my Game of the Year list in 2021. We Are OFK is in contention for the lower reaches of this year’s list, but there’s more than just ‘sure, I liked them’ that makes them worthy of comparison. More even than the fact both are infused with music. The Artful Escape's gameplay makes it a fairly generic platformer, walking from the left of the screen to the right, jumping across each platform as required. As a result, it's easy to argue that it's dated. But it alights a feeling in you, a deep connection with music, identity, and destiny, that makes it feel fresh. In a world where the biggest games chase action-packed cinematic storytelling with increasingly stale and similar emotional beats, the buckwild psychedelic freedom of The Artful Escape is just what gaming needed.
Related: I Want A Shooter With An Alt Z Soundtrack
We Are OFK does not have the wild screech of The Artful Escape. It is Conan Gray to The Artful Escape's 13th Floor Elevators. It's the quietly resonant emotions of Joji, beabadoobee, Chloe Moriondo, mxmtoon, not the
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