I Can’t Stop Replaying ‘We Are OFK’

I knew I was falling in love with We Are OFK when, in the first episode, the character Itsumi texts her friend Luca, “i trust toppy women in jumpsuits.” At this point, I had spent half an hour with We Are OFK’s few main characters, been introduced to Jey, the “toppy” woman in question who Luca had just referred to as “a soft dom,” and started to settle into one of my favorite gaming experiences from 2022. While the aesthetic clued me in that We Are OFK would be an unabashedly queer game, I didn’t expect the beautifully messy romance that tugs everything to its center like a musical vortex, nor did I anticipate it to reinvigorate my love for gaming more broadly.

At the time of this writing, three of We Are OFK’s five episodes have been released. At launch, We Are OFK shipped with two episodes, “hooks” and “loops.” One week later, “smash” released, and it was one of the first times in months where I dropped my evening plans for a game. Playing more We Are OFK and catching up on the newest episode was the only thing I cared about doing that night.

Even though the episodes in We Are OFK are relatively short – “hooks” begins the story at 52 minutes and “smash” serves its intermediate role at 64 minutes – they feel surprisingly dense with character drama. The occasional player interactions combined with punchy, candid dialogue weave everything neatly together. After playing through “hooks,” culminating in the absolute bop of a musical track, “Follow/Unfollow,” each episode starts to feel like an inevitable crescendo towards a memorable, interactive music video. 

The music videos present in each episode of We Are OFK are easily the highlight of the game, and the developers clearly see it that way as well. Upon completing an episode, the music video becomes separately selectable from the main menu, allowing you to bypass the time-consuming act of replaying each episode just to hear some great tunes. It’s thematically tasteful as well, given that We Are OFK’s story is about four friends who join together as a band, writing, recording, and producing their first EP. Sometimes I just boot up the game and hit play on each of the songs, rotating between them absentmindedly as I clear my email inbox or catch up on the day’s Discord posts. The atmosphere that each song creates is something I continuously return to – and the effect somehow hasn’t worn off on me yet.

I recently published an article about gaming burnout where I openly worried that I was losing my love for games as a hobby. Multiple days in a row would pass where I would open Steam, stare at my library, only to spend my night catching up on YouTube videos instead. Finally, the mood would strike, and I would fire up an hour of Neon White or Powerwash Simulator – but inevitably I would feel ready to move on, close the game, and return to a more passive activity. I knew this feeling wasn’t arising because I had chosen bad games to play, but I simultaneously felt lost as to why my prior joy and relaxation that gaming typically brought had deserted me for weeks at a time.

This feeling of staleness and lethargy about gaming caused me to pass We Are OFK’s release day by. But by the weekend, I snagged the game along with Rollerdrome, anticipating that at least one of these titles would help break my rut. Halfheartedly, I launched We Are OFK that Sunday, intending to feel out the first episode and then do something else. But I was sucked into We Are OFK so quickly that I finished both episodes without taking a break. The credits rolled through, I received a generously placed achievement for not skipping them, and instead of closing the game, the first thing I wanted to do was listen to the music videos again. I started “Fool’s Gold” for a second time, now having internalized enough of the melody to sing and hum along with it. 

I’ve made no secret about my deep-seated love for music-centered games. From the Guitar Hero series in my teenage years to my recent Sayonara Wild Hearts tattoo, games that center music tend to suck me into a flow state more effectively than any other genre or focus. We Are OFK taps into my musical soft spot and then doubles down on yet another one of my weaknesses: queer storytelling.

Each of the four main characters in We Are OFK are, as one reviewer put it, “effortlessly queer.” Luca is an adorable sweetheart who the other characters often tease as a cosmically minded idealist whose weakness for romance is only outmatched by his scatterbrained whims. Itsumi is bubbly but sincere, disarmingly wholesome, someone who loves easily and fiercely. Jey is a badass music producer whose confident gravitas masks her secret struggles to please her parents’ traditional expectations. And Carter is an always chill techie who routinely brings level-headed perspective to the most socially chaotic of situations. This cast works brilliantly together, from their art design to their lovingly voice acted performances. Their presence together feels real, like a parasocial relationship with the player waiting to happen.

It’s hard to speak clearly about a story that, to the player’s current eye, is yet unfinished. With only three episodes out, I am frothing for more details. Without spoiling anything, “smash” left my favorite character in a turbulent place – one that makes me feel both hopeful and worried. The excellent accompanying track of the episode, “Infuriata,” brings together those emotions confidently with a cocktail of melancholy angst. For the past few days, I’ve caught myself humming the central melody on repeat. Even my subconscious is ready for more We Are OFK.

Concerningly, I haven’t seen a ton of word-of-mouth for We Are OFK, and the game currently has yet to break 100 reviews on Steam. I can see how We Are OFK may be dismissed as a niche title, an interactive TV show of sorts, but I cannot overstate how dialed into my tastes this game feels. We Are OFK even has a cat – well, sort of; it’s a hologram cat called Debug. And there’s a moment where the game’s central lesbian romance includes a joke about sex plants. Maybe I should check my house for wiretaps, for I feel seen by the amount of my interests and passions that appear in We OFK.

I don’t want to overstate the case for We Are OFK, meaning that much of the interactivity present in the game takes the form of time-bound dialogue choices – whether in-person or via text message. With the exception of the interactable music videos, there’s never really a moment when you control more than what is said by a character. Even then, I get the sense that many of the potential dialogue choices – if not all of them – are written to be flexible in such a way that the illusion of choice for the player is present but the story remains unchanged. Otherwise, I see no possible explanation for how the game is able to tell you the precise length of the episode in advance of playing it.

But as far as indie games in 2022 are concerned, We Are OFK has made such a powerful impression on me that I’ve launched it nearly every day since purchasing it. Whether I am listening back to the wonderful music, or replaying the well-paced episodes, I have found more joy in my experience with We Are OFK than I have in a long while. It’s a game I’m actively thinking about when I’m not playing it; it inspires me to reach out to my friends, to look back at the music I’ve made in the past. Above all, I appreciate the feelings of wistful, vicarious nostalgia that We Are OFK‘s story and its characters bring me. 

I can’t stop replaying We Are OFK. I return for the corny jokes and puns, the steamy keyboard smashing sexts, and the earworms thematically interweaving themselves with a story that I find myself deeply caring about. The tone, aesthetics, themes, and presentation all fit seamlessly together, unifying into precisely the kind of game I love to experience. For a story that probably takes five hours to complete when it’s all said and done, I’m already approaching 10 hours – a time that will likely double by the time all five episodes are released. We Are OFK feels like an antidote to my summer-long apathy towards games.

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