Influenced by classic teen films and coming-of-age shows, the developers wanted to create a story-driven game without cutscenes, allowing players to roam the environment freely.

Musician scntfc composed the game's soundtrack, which features digital music production techniques alongside the use of vintage analog tape recorders and receivers.

Oxenfree's release was accompanied by development documentaries, an alternate reality game, and a collector's edition, and was met with generally positive reviews, with critics praising the presentation and characters, although some of them were left wanting more.

[4][5] Players can select dialogue options at any time during conversations, choosing to wait for other characters to finish, to interrupt, or to remain silent.

After camping on the beach, Alex, Ren, and Jonas explore the nearby caves, where it is rumored certain radio frequencies cause supernatural events.

Unable to send a radio transmission off the island, Ren suggests finding the key to Maggie Adler's estate, where she kept a boat.

The Kanaloa crew intend on using Alex and her friends' bodies to escape the dimension, keeping them on the island long enough for their possession attempts to be successful.

A ghost possesses Jonas and attempts to bargain with Alex, offering to spare her and the rest of her friends if they leave Clarissa behind.

She loops back to a conversation with Michael, who admits that he and Clarissa are planning to move away from town and asks for Alex's advice.

Depending on the message sent and how the player responds, Alex, Jonas, and Ren can decide not to go to Edwards Island at all, preventing the loop.

Cousins Sean Krankel and Adam Hines founded Night School Studio in 2014,[8] having long wanted to collaborate on a video game together.

Hines directed recording sessions, allowing him to change dialogue immediately if he felt material did not work when voiced by the actors.

[16] The team wanted to show multiple characters, dialogue bubbles, and places to explore in the environment on the screen simultaneously.

[11] The animation, art, and effects required for the game's major plot developments ended up taking more time than Hines and Krankel expected, but they found that it helped organize their story in the process.

[12] American music composer and sound designer Andrew Rohrmann, known under his alias scntfc, created Oxenfree's audio.

Hines mentioned that they gave Rohrmann "random" suggestions for the sound, including "John Carpenter meets Boards of Canada", but were impressed with the music they got in response.

[17] Krankel said the goal was for the music to feel simultaneously analog and digital, "so that it's nostalgic without being set in a specific time in the past".

[11] Rohrmann combined digital recording techniques and plugins with analog ones, running some sounds through old cassette decks and reel-to-reel tape.

Much of the music was not scored to specific scenes, but for certain moods; Rohrmann estimated 90% of the songs in the completed game were identical to his original demo recordings.

[25] In January 2016, Skybound released multiple episodes as part of their Creator Series about the creation of Oxenfree, detailing the story, art, mechanics, and voice acting.

[45] Destructoid praised the game for taking inspiration from old movies but still being "anything but generic", writing: "It dials into its own style and mood, tapping into something very heartfelt and special.

Polygon credited Oxenfree for not relying on lazy or clichéd speech, and GameSpot highlighted the interplay between characters that deepened as the game progressed.

Club credited the game with delivering organic dialogue options that lacked any clear good or bad associations.

[46] Reviewers such as VideoGamer.com's Tom Orry felt the script sometimes failed to convey realistic panic or distress of the characters in their exceptional circumstances.

"It's an important reminder that you can't "win" social situations, and that kept Oxenfree's supernatural plot points grounded in reality", she wrote.

[2] Game Informer considered the opaque results of choices an occasional hindrance, with the opposite reactions of expected actions feeling "wrong".

[39] In contrast, GameSpot appreciated that some consequences of dialogue choices did not become clear until much later in the game, encouraging repeat playthroughs to try different approaches.

The sequel takes place five years after Oxenfree, with a new character, an environmental researcher named Riley, who is returning to her hometown of Camena to investigate strange radio transmissions.

[65][66] Krankel said the film fell through because of the complicated Hollywood studio system, and in 2021 reported that the project was moving forward as a television series.