From the moment it sparkled on stage in 2020, We Are OFK charmed with its sunny visuals, enviable character designs, and introspective lyrics to its first song Follow/Unfollow. After sitting down with three episodes, the spellwork has stuck, but it probably isn’t the game you think it is going to be.
Check out the trailer here!
Luca Le Fae is a games writer working on one of the most popular games ever made, Genesis Couture, in their Los Angeles studio. His irreverent and dreamy personality gives him the creativity to imbue the game’s lore with awesome ideas, though management would prefer him to colour within the lines, so to speak.
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Itsumi Saito also works for Genesis Couture after she was scouted while streaming the game, and to make ends meet as she gets used to the hectic LA lifestyle, she is a classically trained pianist who does concerts from time to time. They live with Carter Flores, and being truthful, Carter is my favourite. They’re a VFX artist with a strange font of miscellaneous knowledge in their head, and at one point, they program a holographic cat called Debug to follow them around. I mean? Sorry, Carter is easily the standout.
Anyway. At an event, hoping to network and gain some more gigs, Itsumi is saved from a jerk who wouldn’t leave her alone by Jey Zhang. An established and very successful audio producer, Jey is introduced to the rest of the group and it turns out Jey and Luca know each other from college. As Jey, Luca, Itsumi and Carter get to know each other and collaborate together with music, they realise that they might have created their golden ticket out of their unfulfilling day-to-day.
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Split over five separate replayable episodes, the gameplay is very simple. Letting players select from a choice of options while the playable character chats to others, sends texts, or thinks to themselves, the writing is superb here in We Are OFK. There are ten seconds to choose, and while the choice doesn’t seem to have any huge consequences, characters will call back to what you’ve said earlier in the conversation.
Carter, Luca, Itsumi and Jey’s personalities show up in the way they text. Luca and Itsumi, who are much more flighty and emotional, have an excitable energy that responds to the other. Where other games have opted for much more realistic art styles to ensure your investment in their characters, the fact that I instantly understood Luca and Itsumi’s friendship after an hour with We Are OFK speaks to the skill of the writers to create that easy flow of conversation from something that is being selected from a few options by a player.
Their specific styles also create contrasts that allow you to appreciate the characters as proper people, as Carter’s random musings on the total number of heartbeats of a human hold up the anticipation before Itsumi’s concert. And the voice acting, which comes from a star-studded cast, is incredibly impressive.
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Each episode has a song from We Are OFK which becomes an interactive music video, letting you collect Itsumi’s scattered thoughts in the form of lost cats or smash a delicious feast to smithereens as Jey. The art style is reminiscent of a pastelised Saturday morning cartoon, or to the girls that know, games on the Barbie website. However, the lyrics slice through those delicate visuals to describe a deep dissatisfaction. Be it the fear of being adrift, the frustration of your own lack of focus, or the structures that stop you from expressing how you feel — it’s this combination of somber contemplation, understated symbolism and timeless synth tunes that sow We Are OFK’s concept all together.
I sense, nevertheless, that this is a personal game. It mentions pseudonyms, the emotional support hotline for developers, the cost of “passion projects” on your personal and professional life, crunch. These are all familiar to those who work in the industry. And just as a quick aside, I will be providing a comprehensive review of the game once I have played all five episodes as I only had time to play three and a half before the embargo.
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I think, to pick up this game expecting it to be about a band, is not the most accurate impression of We Are OFK. It is more about people, and then much more about the creative process. How to truly know yourself when the world is spinning faster and faster and rent is due in two weeks time. It’ll resonate with players that are sick of scrolling through perfection and are simultaneously hopeful that the tide will turn one day.
For fans of: Afterparty, Life Is Strange, Necrobarista
We Are OFK was tested on PC with code provided by the publisher. The game will be released in episodes on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and PC. Episode 1 and 2 will release August 18, episode 3 will release August 25, episode 4 will release September 1 and episode 5 will release September 8.
Topics: PC