REVIEW: ‘Oxenfree II: Lost Signals’ Is The Perfect Blend of Haunting And Whimsical (Switch)

Published by Netflix and developed by Night School Studio, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals surprised me at Summer Game Fest with its atmospheric score and beautiful 2D art style. Set in Camena, a small coastal town, unnaturally occurring electromagnetic waves are suddenly causing interference with electrical and radio equipment. Reluctantly, Riley Poverly returns to her hometown to investigate the mystery for a job and winds up witnessing a mystery more expansive than she thought. A narrative adventure game, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals relies on your choices to shape your path in this weird sci-fi story grounded in human nature that offers the player depth and heart.

The game has four core mechanics that help define it against other narrative games in the genre. The first two are the radio and the walkie-talkie. Similar to each other, the radio captures signals as they come through the frequencies of stations on Camena. A signature mechanic of the series, by exploring this static that turns into messages, you can communicate with spirits and by doing so manipulate the world around you and even travel to the past. What became my favorite mechanic of the game, the radio allows you to not just tune into a sound, but to a place and a feeling. Oxenfree II reigns supreme in setting an immersive atmosphere and the radio is a key part of that.

As for the walkie-talkie, a new addition to this game, you can talk to the living, discussing the mysteries of Camena with contacts you meet throughout the game. This allows you to find out more about the land and town, but while they give you sometimes necessary information, the developers still make your choice as to whether or not you follow their advice. Learn from them, head their insights, or don’t, it’s up to you and it all makes for interactive gameplay that sticks.

The impact that the people on the other end of the walkie-talkie have is dictated by how you interact with them. Much like the interactions had in person, the voices on the walkie-talkie also create a dynamic interaction for the overall trajectory of Riley’s story. Every conversation is important, even if there is no face to the voice. This is immediately reflected in the game’s dialogue system which allows you to shape your story through the choices you make and the conversations that you choose to have. Camena may be a small island, but it feels vast.

While player choice is always important, sometimes it’s the player’s lack of choice that prompts Oxenfree II’s uniqueness. While some choice-informed stories will pick a prompt if you don’t choose one yourself, Riley will never speak without you choosing to do so, and additionally, if you choose to cut someone off, that also impacts the direction of the conversation. Everything about the dialogue system that Night School Studio has crafted feels like a unique experience with weight put behind every button press, or choice not to. Similarly, the previously mentioned walkie-talkie can also be used during conversations with others that allow you to change course or inform how you respond to a given situation. The diversity of interaction with others makes every conversation in the game feel fresh and worth having.

It’s rare for me to want to talk to everyone I see. I’m a main quest kind of person and spending time talking to everyone isn’t something I find joy in. That is to say that the fact that I felt the compulsion to talk to everyone and anyone that came on my screen in Oxenfree II is a testament to the game’s level of narrative immersion. A mystery that I felt attached to, I became invested in not just making it to the credits but rather, in building relationships with the people who would help me get there. Camena is a town with quirks, charms, and enough unsettling darkness to make fit squarely into a genre shared with stories like Stranger Things. Even your interactions with members of the Parentage are more than just cut-and-dry moral decisions.

Finally, the last mechanic that defines the game is traversal. Taking notes from 2D platformers but with limited movements, the game’s traversal is endearing and immersive with perfectly timed environmental effects keeping you on your toes. While the game itself is 2D, there is a gorgeous verticality to the game that allows you to explore the dangerous cliffs as you climb up and rappel down them, maneuvering your way through the landscape and avoiding danger when needed.

In the first game, you faced off against the supernatural but in Oxenfree II, you take on Parentage, a cult whose one purpose is to open a new portal and pull something out in the process. Throughout the game, you uncover their motives and darker meanings as you see the ways that Parentage has left its mark on Camena. The interactions with Parentage propel the game’s horror elements and continually ramps up the tension as you move through portals and time.

Oxenfree II‘s beauty comes from its simple atmospheric aesthetic blending with a narrative filled with depth. With the choices central to the story’s progression, I immediately found myself drawn to playing again. With a gorgeous score and one of my favorite art styles in a game all year, the joy and intrigue I get from Oxenfree II: Lost Signals is endless.

There is a softness to the art of the game that feels like you’re turning the page on a haunted storybook with each choice. A haunting whimsical take on the Pacific North West, the art team at Night School Studio is unmatched when it comes to their environmental designs. Appearing static at first, there are subtle movements in the environments and backgrounds that add to the game’s atmosphere of fantasy.

The game’s aesthetic lowers you into something nostalgic, something old, and something fantastical at the same time. The balance that the art team achieves in haunting, whimsy, and science fiction hits every box for a Stranger Things generation without retreading any territory. While I don’t necessarily like drawing comparisons to another form of media, it’s hard to nail why the game manages to feel both old and new at the same time, and that series is the best way to describe the moody color palette choices with the synth sound elements, and the overall narrative of reckoning with your past and exploring a potential future.

Much of this grounding comes from the connections formed throughout the game, but the true star is you as Riley. As a character, Riley is just the right level of mystery to make you, the player, feel as if the decisions you’re making belong to you and you alone. That said, her past looms over the choices that she makes, and the vulnerability that she carries with her manifests itself in how she relates to Parentage and the supernatural exploration of the game.

Jacob, a new character who is deeply connected to the first game, has always lived in Camena. Unlike Riley who would rather be anywhere but Camena, he is pulled to seek and solve the mysteries of the island even if he’s not exactly sure how to or what they all mean. Jacob pushes you to embrace the unknown. While he is uncertain in many ways, he wants to do more with life, and his relationship with Maggie drives Jacob’s curiosity in a way that captures you as you see the various puzzles across the game. He brings balance to a narrative that at times, given Riley’s demeanor, can feel like an emotional well of somber elements.

My only issue with Oxenfree II: Lost Signals is how the game has been marketed as a sequel game that can be entered as a newcomer or as a returning player. There are moments that I feel were meant to have more impact if you had had the background knowledge from the first game, particularly as you learn more about Jacob and Maggie. This doesn’t mean I had a bad experience or an incomplete one. It just means some elements of the payoff, may have been larger if I had played the first game. In its position as a sequel, I can’t fault the game for building on a foundation it created in the first, and while some notes needed some background, my experience was still a home run for Night School Studio. In fact, I have Oxenfree downloading now.

Oxenfree II: Lost Signals’ story is moving, moody, and meticulously crafted in line with your choices. Immersive in every way, the gameplay is deeply tied to the game’s narrative, never feeling disjointed even as you move from chasing frequencies to traversing the land, and all of that succeeds because of how you, as Riley, fit into the story.

Oxenfree II: Lost Signals is available now on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4|5, and Netflix.