I have a confession to make, I just didn’t love Oxenfree like everyone else did. I think it’s my fault mostly. Despite owning a copy for years, I only played it a couple of months ago.
I think the combination of years of praise and my poor attention span at the time were the biggest factors in how lukewarm I felt about it.
I say this to give context for how surprised I was by not just how much I love OXENFREE II: Lost Signals, but also by how utterly gripped by its narrative I was from the opening moments.
OXENFREE II: Lost Signals
Much like its predecessor, OXENFREE II is a spooky story-centric adventure that unfolds differently depending on your choices. If you’re simply not the kind of gamer who enjoys walking around and talking being the pillars of gameplay then it’s a good bet that neither Oxenfree will be for you, for that is the vast majority of what the player is asked to do here. There’s some lite puzzle-solving in the sequel just as there was in the first one, but a little less of it.
There are around a dozen collectible letters to be found which expand the backstory just as the original featured too, although I felt like they’re less hidden here. The one significant addition here over the original is the inclusion of several side quests, but even they manage to be quite cohesive with the core story and never really feel like they’re taking over from the central issues at hand. OXENFREE II is an extremely focused experience, much more so than its forebear, and it’s something that my ADHD-addled brain really appreciates.
In a departure from the ‘kids on bikes’ vibe of the original, players are now put in the shoes of a 20-something-year-old woman named Riley who has recently returned to the coastal town of Camena after a few years away. Today is her first at a new job working for a local institution that’s researching radio wave phenomena emanating from a certain nearby island that will be instantly familiar to anyone who played the first game.
Riley’s handler Evelyn lays out the task via radio at the start of the journey, and it seems simple enough. All she has to do is meet up with Jacob, another new employee, and together they just have to plant a few transmitters at the highest points on the coast and aim them at the ominous-looking isle beyond. It’s not long before things start to get weird and wild of course, but to go into the story much more than this would drift into spoiler territory pretty fast.
The tale being told this time around is a more familial affair and can feature some deep conversations about death and lives wasted. It’s heavy stuff, and the game wisely features a content warning section on its main menu. There’s a click-through there promising further details, but unfortunately as of writing this just takes you to a page on developer Night School’s website with a big ol’ Lorem Ipsum.
The writing and voice performances are all so exceptionally excellent that the weight of the story’s themes is pulled off wonderfully. Conversations are as impressively naturalistic as players of the original would expect, and thankfully the folks at Night School Studio have done a huge amount of work to address the issues of conversations overlapping and being cut off that were so frustratingly common the first time around.
When I consciously tried to break dialogue streams on several occasions, most of the time whichever character was speaking would just pick up right where they were after the interruption was over with a tidy ‘as I was saying…’, and most other times I was allowed to just start the conversation again from the top. It’s not flawless, but it is impressively naturalistic, and a vital improvement given how utterly central conversation is to the whole experience.
It’s somehow even more visually stunning than the original game also, with not just prettier and moodier 2D environments but significantly improved character models and more personable animation. You could take a screenshot during literally any moment of OXENFREE II and it would look like a perfectly composed digital drawing. It’s genuinely awesome stuff.
I believe that a truly great narrative sequel should enhance and deepen its prior, and OXENFREE II impressively does so while also presenting a journey that’s fully appreciable in its own right. I truly believe that you could play the first game after playing the second and that it would work just as well as playing them sequentially. Considering the snappier pace and more focused design of the sequel, I’d almost go so far as to recommend doing so.
OXENFREE II: Lost Signals is an immaculately crafted adventure with endearing characters and engaging drama that resonated with me a lot more than I expected it would. Fundamentally it’s more Oxenfree, Night School isn’t reinventing the wheel, but the clever storytelling and expanded worldbuilding achieved here manage to raise that game to a new height when placed as a companion piece next to it.
It’s been a long time since a sequel to a work that I was only tepid on has blown me away quite like this, but I’m extremely glad that OXENFREE II has.
OXENFREE II: Lost Signals was reviewed on PC using digital code provided by Night School Studio.
