“Who’s watching?” The first prompt when starting a new save in We Are OFK should be a clue. This is no ordinary game.
Amidst the recent glut of interactive dramas, OFK is here to give you agency with this vibrant animated thread about a group of painfully hip millennials trying to make it on the LA music scene. You serve primarily as an interested observer while the four leads form a band, navigate the social vortex, and struggle to fall into a relationship.
But think of it as an interactive press kit for a fictional synth-pop band rather than a too-cool visual novel. Anyone old enough to remember The Monkees, a fake band formed to appear on TV shows but turned into a real chart-topping act, will recognize the concept.
OFK has an episodic structure that focuses on each band member in turn over five or more articles. The full release has been staggered over several weeks, with the first two episodes of him out now and the remaining three of him coming out within the next month. Each chunk builds a story towards creating a “single” accompanied by a (slightly) interactive video.
The opening song, Follow/Unfollow, is an absolute banger and has been available on streaming services for a year now as the game nears completion of development. No spoiler to say the other he four can’t reach the same heights, but they make up a very comfortable EP that shows this “fake” band is more than just a vanity project.
But back to the game. Not always the most likeable group for LA millennials. Narcissistic, often communicating in choppy sentences and unaware of their own privilege, they still expose their dreams and fears to make them more relatable. The main songwriters fear that their songs will not work. Producer fights pushy parents. One character struggles with the darkness of the past.
Much of the player’s interactivity revolves around selecting dialog responses in text conversations. The script is pretty witty, but the actual choices are pretty fantastic. You’re with these people in the scene, but you don’t really control them.
As long as you accept that constraint, OFK delivers a punchy backstory and builds a song crescendo for each episode. A little Gorillaz, a little Lana Del Rey, these songs are the real highlights of this effort and should be remembered long after the whims of their supposed creators wear off.
