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Supernatural Teen Thriller ‘Oxenfree’ Revealed
Independent developer Night School Studio has unveiled their next project, the supernatural teen thriller Oxenfree. In it, some friends decide to take a break from the stressful life of being teens to head to the coast for a night of partying. This leads to their accidentally open a rift to some sort of hell dimension, freeing murderous horrors from the beyond, because that’s what hell rifts do.
The game stars a handful of actors whose voices you may recognize if you’ve played any recent Telltale game, including Erin Yvette (The Wolf Among Us, Tales from the Borderlands), Gavin Hammon (The Walking Dead, Tomb Raider), and Britanni Johnson (Borderlands, Borderlands 2).
If you’re wondering why so many of these actors had roles in Telltale games, it’s because Night School Studio is itself comprised of Telltale alumni. Oxenfree is slated to release later this year.
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war, but it was a cheerful illustrator from England who helped to define the terrifying war-torn imagery that inspired what we now know as Grimdark (a hybrid genre combining horror with sci-fi/fantasy).
Unfortunately for fans of Warhammer 40,000, Trench Crusade and countless other sources of Grimdark thrills, veteran artist John Blanche passed away this week after struggling with health issues for the past few years.
While the artist retired back in 2023, he leaves us with an enormous legacy of iconic artwork that continues to inspire gamers and storytellers around the world to this very day.
The news is especially gloomy as it was only last year that Daniel Lowman and Napoleon Dynamite himself Jon Heder released The Grim & the Dark: The Search for John Blanche, a documentary following Heder’s exploration of the Grimdark genre culminating in a heartwarming encounter with Blanche in his own home.
Below is one of my favorite pieces by Blanche, his highly influential depiction of Warhammer 40k’s God-Emperor of Mankind on his Golden Throne.
We send our deepest condolences to John Blanche’s family, friends, and fans.
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