Glitch as the Representation of the Uncanny in Oxenfree

Agata Waszkiewicz's article examines how the audiovisual glitch functions as a representation of the uncanny in Oxenfree (2016), a narrative-driven independent game by Night School Studio that blends Gothic mystery with coming-of-age storytelling. The analysis argues that the Gothic, long a vehicle for transgression and for provoking shared anxiety between characters and audiences, finds a natural home in the video game medium, where players occupy the dual roles of active participants and passive recipients of a predetermined story. Drawing on theories of the uncanny from Jentsch and Freud, cognitive dissonance research, and studies of glitch art, the author contends that in Oxenfree glitch serves as a visual marker of the rift between the living and the spectral world, distorting the image to disorient players and mirror the characters' unease.

The article situates the game's ghosts, which are the souls of a submarine crew imprisoned in another dimension, within broader traditions of Gothic and posthuman anxieties about technology. It distinguishes between spontaneous glitches, which are errors in code, and deliberately designed "glitch-alike" effects, arguing that Oxenfree's glitches belong to the latter category. Because the glitch is purposeful and reliable, the author notes, it loses much of the subversive ludic potential it typically has in games, instead operating primarily at the aesthetic and narrative levels.

The study also examines the game's looped structure, its branching endings, and an alternate reality game extending beyond the software, concluding that Oxenfree subverts player expectations and blurs the boundary between the fictional world and the player's own. The paper's scope is interpretive and close-reading based rather than empirical, relying on textual and gameplay analysis supported by theoretical and secondary literature.