Oxenfree

Oxenfree ARG
Completed on Jun 11, 2016
The Oxenfree ARG had an emphasis on radio frequencies and morse code.
Type	[[List_of_Investigations#Official|Official]]
Creator	Night School Studio
Discovered	Jan 15, 2016
Completed	Jun 11, 2016

Main Page > List of Investigations > Oxenfree

Note: this page is under construction. Most information has been pulled from the Oxenfree Wiki.

Oxenfree is an adventure game that was released on January 15, 2016, developed by Night School Studio. The player controls Alex, a high-school girl, as she explores an abandoned island with her 4 friends. The game included an ARG, which concluded on June 11, 2016.

Anomalies

As Alex, the protagonist, progresses through the game, she must tune her portable radio into different frequencies to unlock doors and hear hints. The game contains collectibles in the form of anomalies. To uncover an anomaly, Alex must stand in front of a location that is marked by a stack of rocks, and, by trial and error, tune her radio into a particular frequency. Once this is accomplished, the anomaly is revealed, and a short audio clip plays.

10 of the 12 anomalies found in the game start with a military callsign:

89.9 Able 9 (A9)
91.5 Baker 1 (B1)
94.6 Charlie 6 (C6)
97.9 Dog 9 (D9)
99.9 Easy 3 (E3)
101.1 Fox 6 (F6)
103.5 George 3 (G3)
104.7 How 7 (H7)
106.7 Item 3 (I3)
102.3 Jig 3 (J3)

Arranging them alphabetically reveals a phone number that can be called: (916)-936-3733. Calling the number, you can hear a song from Oxenfree's soundtrack, combined with Morse code that spells out the word MAGGIE, which is a reference to Margaret Adler, a character who previously inhabited the island that Alex and her friends explore in the game.

Beacon Beach

January 28

On January 28, those people that had phoned the number received a text message from it, comprised of Morse code:

--. --- --- -.. / .-- --- .-. -.- / -.. .-.. / -... -... / .-.. .. ... - . -. / -.-. .-.. --- ... .
GOOD WORK DL BB LISTEN CLOSE

"DL BB" was determined to be an instruction: "Download Beacon Beach" (Beacon Beach being a song from Oxenfree's soundtrack). In the Bandcamp version of Beacon Beach, players found Morse code that translated to:

SEARCH TWITTER 4 NUM SEARCH TWITTER 4

Searching Twitter for 9169363733 (the phone number) brought them to @xray9169363733. This Twitter account reported on calls made to the phone number, including thedate of the call, the time of the call (in PST), the city and state from which the call was made, and a transcript of any message left after the tone of the number's answering machine. If no message was left, the transcript would read "No transcript available." However, the account deleted some tweets sporadically, leading to concern among the community - what if a critically important tweet got deleted?

February 11

On February 11th, scntfc, the composer of the Oxenfree OST, tweeted the following:

again, reminding gently... beacon beach from the oxenfree soundtrack is a free DL. https://t.co/UUTX4NXZvh

When players downloaded Beacon Beach from Bandcamp again, the Morse code had changed. This version of the song has different Morse code in the left and right channels of the song:

Left: DELETES NOT NEEDED PLEASE STAND BY SOS
Right: SOS KANALOA SOS KANALOA SOS KANALOA SOS

This was a nudge from scntfc, saying that the Tweets that were being deleted were not needed to solve the ARG.