Night School Studio may have given us our first sleeper hit of the year with their teen thriller Oxenfree. Though it sometimes feels like a Telltale adaptation of The Goonies, there’s an emotional depth hidden inside this charming hand-drawn tale of teens being traumatized by vengeful island spirits that raises the bar for future teen thrillers in unexpected ways.

With its roots planted firmly in 80s horror, Oxenfree only ever borrows enough to feel familiar. It’s “Lost” meets Poltergeist, with a synth pop soundtrack that’s been warped and distorted to a haunting effect and visual flourishes that makes it look like you’re playing it on a VHS tape.

Fortunately, as nostalgic as this game can get, it’s not just another love letter to an enormously influential era that defined horror films for decades while establishing a precedent for coming up with inventive ways to spill the blood of hyper-sexualized sex mannequins so the audience has something to cheer for.

Oxenfree hauls ass in the opposite direction, propelled by smart writing and top-notch voice talent. It combines both to deliver a human drama that’s less about the undead things that are pouring into our world through a temporal tear, and more about the delicate relationships that tether its quirky cast of freshly minted high school graduates.

Everything we see is experienced from the perspective of a girl named Alex, who awkwardly tries to bond with her new step-brother, Jonas, as she struggles to get over the brother she lost. That same death is the source of the tension between Alex and Clarissa, the group’s resident mean girl who also happened to date Alex’s dead brother.

As fond as I am of all of ghost kind, it’s dynamics like this that make me wonder what this game would be like had Alex not used her radio to punch a hole in the sky. Getting to know everyone wouldn’t normally rank above the visceral excitement of being murdered by ghosts, but this game does the complicated backstory well enough that it was often more rewarding than solving the mystery of the island’s dark past.

A branching conversation system is the most effective tool for better understanding the hidden histories, layered personalities and secret motivations that fuel Alex and her friends. It offers three paths for you to take during every conversation so you can use what you know about the person to choose the tone of the conversation, as well as guide it toward wherever it is you want it to go.

It doesn’t take much to derail a conversation, either. It took me a few accidental interruptions caused by poorly timed responses before I got comfortable enough with my timing to appreciate the strategy that’s involved. The modicum of strategy seems small until you sit it beside a game that has a similar conversation system. I’m sure we’ll all appreciate this quiet innovation when Telltale releases their next episodic series.

There’s something to be admired about a game that eschews some of the more annoying trends in modern game design. I’ve grown tired of the unnecessary hand-holding, and the games that have to hang a flashing sign on the features we see pasted in itemized lists on the back of the box.

Oxenfree is all humor, horror and heart, like a Joss Whedon-directed “Scooby Doo” special based on an episode of “The Twilight Zone”. It doesn’t need to rely on gimmicks, and with the exception of some light backtracking that could’ve easily been solved by a jog button, no attempt is made to pad its 3-5 hour running time with irrelevant errands and tedium.

These seemingly disparate qualities form the backbone of a game that isn’t as straightforward as its premise might suggest. I didn’t need to get very far to understand why Night School Studio wanted to build a supernatural thriller out of a recycled ghost story, teen angst and 80s flair.

Oxenfree has a profound understanding of human relationships. It’s spot-on dialogue and brilliantly paced character development makes this one of the more emotionally raw human dramas I’ve experienced in any medium, gaming or otherwise.

It’s about how we interact with each other in times of mourning, peril, or even imminent death. It explores the impact that love, loss and various other life-altering crises can have on our interactions with the world, and the relationships we have with friends and family.

It lifts its ideas from a variety of films, television series and even other video games. I’ve compared it to The Goonies, Poltergeist, “Lost”, “Scooby Doo”, “Twin Peaks” and Until Dawn, but its strongest connection might actually be with The Walking Dead.

The Walking Dead isn’t about zombies. Its post-apocalyptic world is lousy with them, sure, but it’s not what the series is about. It’s about a group of people and the relationships they form in order to hold onto their humanity in a world that no longer values it. The undead are one manifestation of this fear, but they’re set decorations compared to the living, breathing monsters that commit most of the worst things we see in the series.

All this game needed to do is swap out the ghouls for ghosts. Goblins or gourdpeople might’ve worked, so long as they didn’t distract from my interactions with the rest of the cast.

The Final Word: Oxenfree uses paranormal activity and an exceptional cast of voice actors to tell a personal story with real emotional depth.