Oxenfree II: Lost Signals
PREVIEW
It followscloselyinthefootstepsofthe
first game. There’s another haunted
island, and more mysterious radio
frequencies making electronic equipment
go haywire. However, this time you play as
Riley, a researcher returning to her
hometown to investigate this unnatural
phenomenon, and as she spends
more time looking into the signals
she begins to unveil the secrets that
the island holds.
In the first game, the teens on
Edward’s Island unwittingly opened
portals, but now on Camena a masked
group called Parentage are deliberately
trying to access these gateways,
harnessing the power of the portals to pull
something through – though exactly what
is a mystery for now. Parentage is using
radio frequencies to carry out their plan
and, although radios were your main guide
in the first game, walkie-talkies take centre
stage in Lost Signals.
The walkie-talkies in Oxenfree II are
what I’m most excited about, as they have
the most potential to create some
incredibly creepy moments. Throughout
your time on Camena you’ll receive
ghostly messages on your device fromother residents affected by the island’s
supernatural anomalies, and you can
often get calls from people you don’t
know. The voices can ask for favours or
just have a conversation, but it’s up to you
whether you answer or not. Who could
resist having a casual chinwag with a
mysterious stranger?
The majority of our demo isn’t on the
island at all, but beneath it, in a series of
spooky caverns. It’s an hour into the game
and Riley and Jacob are traversing the
island’s shadowy tunnels when they come
across a ‘time tear’. Using the same radio
tuning system as the first game, Riley
begins to open the tear, which transports
the two into 1899 when the caves were
still being used as mines. It looks like
hopping through different pockets of time
will be an exciting new addition to the
story, although it’s not entirely made clear
whether they’ll be getting caught up in the
tangles of different timelines or just
passing through.TALK RADIO
Oxenfree’s celebrated dialogue system
stays completely intact, and the decisions
you make in conversation will directly
affect the game’s story. One of these
changes is with Riley’s island-
exploring partner Jacob. Picking
certain dialogue bubbles will impact
the nature of your past together as well as
the current relationship between the two
of you. Night School has also confirmed
that there will be multiple endings to Lost
Signals, saying that there’s a wide range of
outcomes – more than in the first game.
Almost everyone from the original
development team has returned to make
this sequel, and certainly it shows in the
familiarly spooky vibes of the island.
Traversing the area will be more
dangerous than before, though, and Riley
will have to choose different paths to take- whether she should try and jump across
a rocky chasm, or find a safer but slower
way around, for example.
Oxenfree II: Lost Signals looks to be
another chilling entry in the series. I’m all
for more haunted technology, and the
walkie-talkies look to bring something
eerily new to the game. It’s due out in
2022 and already feels like an adventure
that’ll leave you with major goosebumps.
Rachel Watts
I
t’s been five years since the first Oxenfree- the story of a group of teenagers who
accidentally disturb something ancient
on an eerie island – and after a brief bar
crawl through hell in Afterparty, developer Night
School has returned to the spooky series with
Oxenfree II: Lost Signals.
Spooky tech and masked gangs
haunt Night School Studio’s sequelOXENFREE II:
LOST SIGNALS
THE WALKIE-TALKIES IN
OXENFREE II ARE WHAT I’M
MOST EXCITED ABOUTRELEASE
2022DEVELOPER
Night School StudioPUBLISHER
MWM InteractiveLINK
nightschoolstudio.comNEED TO KNOWFIRST
LOOKSorry, you’ve got the
wrong walkie-talkie
number.