Scrapped Stranger Things Game Wanted To Tell Its Story Through Burner Phone Messages

Established in 2014, Night School released its debut game Oxenfree in 2016, which was nominated for multiple awards, including ‘Outstanding Achievement in Story’ at the 20th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. Initially starting their small team out of co-founder Sean Krankel’s kitchen, the studio found its feet in the industry as well as being approached by Telltale to develop a companion game for their Stranger Things title.

Unfortunately, after years of issues and reported crunch, Telltale closed up shop in September 2018, leaving the Stranger Things title and its companion game in limbo, eventually falling into a never-to-be-seen-again void. Although Night School was unable to bring the game to fruition, Krankel does give some insight into what could have been if things worked out.

In an interview with Game Informer, Night School’s Sean Krankel talked about how Oxenfree came about and how the studio came to be. While discussing the structure of Oxenfree’s narrative development and how they wanted it to be somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of The Last of Us and Telltale’s other titles by adding cutscenes, something other games weren’t exploring at the time, Krankel states that the teams’ involvement in the Stranger Things companion game was “semi-far along” in development, and was going to be closely tied to Telltale’s Stranger Things in some capacity.

“The gist of it, that I’ll say, is just that they were making a big Stranger Things game and reached out to us about making a small one that could talk to the big one. And it was really cool. It was really interesting how the two games might have talked to each other in a very compelling way.”

Just like Night School’s previous mobile game, Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n which was based on the popular TV show Mr Robot, the Stranger Things game would have followed that same blueprint in terms of implementing its narrative around the usage of burner phones as a unique way of telling its story to players. This different yet intuitive storytelling structure would have spilled out into real-life conversations as well as text messages too, and something Night School used as their development trademark.

“That was a foundation that we’ve never wanted to fully leave behind, but we haven’t done anything with that general design for years,” says Krankel. “It’s something now that we’re in the early stages of exploring, but the Stranger Things game that we were working on used that and took it a lot further.”

Night School Studio was acquired by Netflix in September 2021, as part of Netflix’s venture into video game offerings, but thankfully, the acquisition did not affect the studio’s work on Oxenfree 2 which was released last year to very positive Steam reviews.

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