Pop. Love. Panic! The OFK Story

Overview

Pop. Love. Panic! The OFK Story, formerly known as We Are OFK, is a five-part, episodic narrative adventure game developed and published by Team OFK. The first two episodes were released August 18, 2022, for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch.

Story

The game follows the story of Itsumi, a pianist working PR for a video game studio, who movies to LA, and her friends Luca, a singer and writer for the same video game studio, and Carter, a VFX artist. Together they start a band, OFK, with music producer Jey and begin the process of launching their music career.

Gameplay

Pop. Love. Panic! The OFK Story is very minimal in terms of traditional gameplay options. It is primarily a narrative adventure game that consists of 5 one-hour long videos that the player watches, with the ability to make occasional dialogue choices. These choices come in the form of thoughts bubbles or text message conversations between characters and have no real tangible effect in the game or on its narrative.

Each episode contains its own interactive music video. The music videos have the player engage in some sort of light minigame, giving direct control over a character or an on-screen cursor, in tasks that typically involve collecting an item, or navigating through a space.

Episodes

Episode 1: Hooks (August 18, 2022)

Itsumi has moved to LA, away from her friends and family, and is struggling to adjust to her new life and working in video game PR. Her friend and co-worker, Luca, is struggling to find passion in writing backstory for the game. At an industry event, the two meet Luca's former Teaching Assistant, Jey, who is now a music producer and encourages Luca to try and get back into singing and song writing.

Episode 2: Loops (August 18, 2022)

After being let go from his video game writing job, Luca struggles to find out what is next for him. He continues to put off Jey's request to write her songs, and instead throws himself into internet dating. Meanwhile, Itsumi has begun to start a relationship with Jey as Carter prepares for a club show with Debug, a hologram cat they've developed.

Episode 3: Smash (August 25, 2022)

The band starts to come together after Carter's show. Itsumi is attempting to balance finding a gig for the band in an upcoming video game release and practicing for her piano recital. Jey is offered an exclusive deal to work with a big-time artist and must give up on Itsumi and the others in order to advance her own career as a producer.

Episode 4: Splits (September 1, 2022)

As the band tries to move on in Jey's absence, Itsumi goes with Carter on a road trip, as Carter meets up in secret with and old friend and struggles with moving on and the loss of another.

Episode 5: Mix (September 8, 2022)

The band has three weeks to get everything ready for their debut, while everyone continues to struggle moving past old personal issues.

Soundtrack

The game's soundtrack consists of a combination original music composed by Omniboi and music videos for songs by the game's band OFK, sung by Teddy Dief, and written and produced by Luna Shadows and Thomas Powers.