Must know
What is it? An interactive series about the ups and downs of being in LA in their twenties, and the making-of of the virtual band OFK
Expect to pay: $20/£18
Developer: Team OFK
Publisher: Team OFK
Judged by: Windows 10, Intel i5-10500H, 16GB, RTX 3060 (Laptop)
Multiplayer? no
Clutch: ofk.cool (opens in new tab)
We Are OFK’s biggest flaws come off its hook: the game exists to launch OFK as a music project. It’s the fictional origin story of a ‘real’ virtual band (think Riot’s K/DA music group). The songs have to work as standalone commercial hits, leading to compromises that wouldn’t be made for a regular OST, while the plot itself goes out of its way to criticize such compromises as inauthentic. The characters are also a product the game is trying to sell: it really wants me to like them, support them, and project myself onto them.
We Are OFK focuses on the band’s formation in a pastel-heavy LA, and has minimal interaction. Occasional dialogue options share insight into a character’s thoughts or feelings, but don’t affect anything outside of the moment. There are two different ways to call someone a jerk, or three different ways to get hyped about boba, but you’re still stuck with “jerk” and “yay boba”. The story is split into five episodes of about an hour each and will be released weekly, along with a single and a music video.
The first episode ends with the music video for Follow/Unfollow. The song debuted at last year’s Game Awards via a video from the virtual crew, but here it takes place in abstract minigames that turn it into a messy break-up song: breaking the phone while trying not to hit an ex. drunk texting and herding cats to return box. These sections are more toys than play, they add visual excitement but don’t affect anything.
It’s so obvious that We Are OFK wants me to like the characters and feel close to them that anything that lands wrong tends to land hard.
The pitfall of OFK being a real band trying to make recognizable bops for all of its audience means that some songs seem to fit their episode better than others. An ode to the human experience of insecurity and imposter syndrome, Fool’s Gold has no qualms about assigning a particular character as well. Footsteps, on the other hand, really wants you to lose yourself in the beat and the more technically involved music video, but is all style and no substance if you hold onto it at the end of an episode about grief and alienation.
The band is a team of idiosyncratic, chaotic twenty-somethings. There’s Itsumi, the anime-loving keyboardist with a habit of getting messy drunk and sending keyboard smashes in the group chat. Luca, the lead singer and overall space business, passionate when distracted. Carter, on audiovisual effects, a gentle engineering genius whose mind wanders a little sideways. Finally, Jey, their producer, who seems like she’s got her shit together but tries to live by impossible standards.
We are OFK is completely focused on the band members, their wishes and needs, and the way in which they come into contact and conflict with each other. Most of the series is spent watching them talk to each other in person or on their phones. They sex through coded emojis in a bar, vent text while bored at work, and check group chat during a date. This understanding of characters’ private spaces — including the way they think about what they’re saying — should make me feel closer to them, but it has the opposite effect.
You know when someone tries to hype you about this really funny thing that happened in their group chat, only to share a screenshot and – without the chemistry of the people in the group, at the time – it’s just kinda embarrassing ? I was talking about the gothic-cowboy #aesthetic in one of mine this morning so I’m in no way immune to the asinine but I also know I can’t explain that bat-emoji-cowboy-emoji is funny to anyone else . We Are OFK tries to emulate that dynamic, but more often than not comes across as cringey.
There’s something too real and too fake about We Are OFK at the same time.
It’s so obvious that We Are OFK wants me to like the characters and feel close to them that anything that lands wrong tends to land hard. In the first episode, Luca compares a trivial choice about songs to the Holocaust film Sophie’s Choice – something he is only familiar with through cultural osmosis. It’s meant to show that he’s hyperbolic and a bit bland, but I found it uncomfortably distasteful and hated that “Sophie’s kids thing” became a recurring joke between two characters over several episodes.
Given that We Are OFK’s attempts to connect me with the cast failed, it’s not surprising that my favorite episode is one that slows things down by pulling me away from the group, and has relatively few text messages. It’s almost disconnected, save for some drunk-on-yogurt lyrics from Itsumi, and quietly focuses on sadness. The themes of the series – fragility, conflicting needs – are best expressed in the one episode that deviates most from its format. In particular, it’s the one where the music video feels the least integrated. Best episode, worst promotion from OFK.
There are cleverly composed scenes in We Are OFK. The presentation of dialogue choices is often framed as little visual jokes, and there are funny and thoughtful callbacks in multiple episodes. When the format breaks, it does so with incredible playfulness and heart. The experience is simply held back by the band.
There’s something too real and too fake about We Are OFK at the same time that always makes you feel like you’re being sold. There are details that feel like someone else’s catharsis, like when Luca and Itsumi vent about crunch and mismanagement in their day-to-day games industry jobs. Luca talks about wanting to create meaningful art that helps people, and is repeatedly reassured that he is, and it’s hard to reconcile with the catchy but meaningless dance-pop the band produces in the universe. It’s thematically a pitch for an indie underdog in a plot that lyrically deals with the use of industrial connections.
The novelty here is spot on: it’s not just any game, it’s a fictional biopic for a ‘real’ virtual band, streaming three times a week on Twitch and hoping to tour. If you put the novelty aside, there are more interesting stories about twenty-somethings finding themselves. There’s interactive fiction that uses text in more engaging ways, and games that don’t try to sell you a relationship with their product.
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