Oxenfree 2 Lost Signals

It’s been 7 years since the original thriller adventure Oxenfree appeared on the market, and has been lucky enough to make it big with 1 million sales and 3 million downloads on Game Pass. A sleeper hit in the Steam catalog, it’s one of those games with an interesting presentation that makes you want to click on it and give it a try. It’s even so popular that the developers made a deal with Netflix and it’s free to play on the streaming platform if you have a current subscription.

Oxenfree 2 puts you in charge of Riley, an adult woman that’s performing her job of planting radio transmitters in Camena. Immediately you’re introduced to a new tool that wasn’t available in the first game: a walkie-talkie. This is how you communicate with Kimberly. You’ll receive requests of interactions from different channels, you’ll be able to actively look for someone, and you’ll be able to find and extend the list of contacts. Using the walkie-talkie is at times optional though and you may miss opportunities to engage with some characters. Not all of the conversations are a requirement to complete the game, but you may miss some Steam achievements.

Conversations are the main focus of the gameplay, and they will look extremely familiar if you played the first game. Not going for any option is a type of accepted answer. The answer you choose defines the interactions Riley has with every character. Being not only story-driven, but dialogue-driven, Oxenfree 2 gives weight to your words. Every click forges Riley’s relationships so bear in mind that the ending will be influenced by them. There are three different endings you can get. Riley will interact with the other characters right up to the end and the last lines as well as the overall vibe of the ending will sound drastically different based on how you behave.

Each chat bubble allows you to play around with the different extremes Riley can talk with. After a conversation ends, you’ll see a bubble appear above a character that shows your selections have affected your relationship with them, so keep an eye out for them. Multiple bubbles might appear at any time and will fade out with different timing according to the urgency of the situation and the sadism of the developers, so if you’re being distracted by your smartphone in real life you might have to use your quick gaming reflexes to catch up.

I used the keyboard and mouse to play. Sometimes it wasn’t clear how many times I had to click to choose an answer. The lag could have been because there was other dialogue going on at the same time, but whatever the reason, the fear of missing a chat option is real. Any chat will continue between screen transitions, so don’t be afraid to lose – or break, though hopefully that won’t happen – something. Via WASD control you can manually move and turn Riley in the streets of Camena. The paths are quite simple and straight forward, but being able to control her micro movements came in handy maybe once or twice when path tracking using point & click wasn’t working correctly. Clicking on any point and having Riley find the best way there on her own has been extremely convenient and it works well going in and out the dialogue bubbles when needed. You’ll still need to use the keyboard for some puzzles, and you might prefer to move the radio frequencies with the arrow keys as the mouse wheel is not sensitive enough, but ultimately it’s more for small details that you’ll not need anyway. The characters find a reason to talk many times, the voice over is on point and it fills most of the screens. Considering the mystery you are asked to uncover, with the thriller elements being evident from the very beginning and the horror situations not holding back, you might prefer to turn on subtitles so you don’t miss anything and make a wrong choice with just few seconds available.

While it is true that the game puts you under constant threat, there’s no health bar you have to worry about, no weapons, and there aren’t any actions you can perform freely. You can’t die and there’s no game over. There’s also no way to manually save the game. At the start of the game, you’re asked to choose a slot, and that’s it. Since there’s no save function, you have to live with the choices you make. Sometimes the game will save automatically, indicated by a logo appearing in the corner, but it doesn’t seem to happen too frequently so you have to have a lot of trust in the “quit and resume last checkpoint” option that’s available. Though the radio is the main tool of the series, it feels more like an additional feature than an actual useful asset you choose to rely on. It definitely feels underutilized, though it does end up being automatically involved at several points throughout the story.

When you realize your character can’t die, it changes the way you approach your playthrough. It makes you more relaxed and allows you to enjoy the exploration, but it undermines some of the horrific effects from the supernatural elements of the game. It’s still a creepy and spooky adventure, but if you’re looking for a survival game, this isn’t the game for you. The atmosphere is one of the best aspects of the game. The environments are consistent, You travel through other dimensions and use portals to change levels, though the simplified portal represented by a plain triangle on screen can’t be compared to the portal design implemented by Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart.

Some technical solutions are very basic if you look at the market as a whole, some texture and architectural elements are repeated throughout the game, and there’s one or two spots where more grass would be appreciated and the texture looks too exposed, but while design choices like the way the trees tilt might be a matter of taste, the game movement looks as good as the screenshots you see around. The simpler technical designs allow it to be ported to mobile easily. the prebaked lighting properly defines the parking area of a family market closed in the night, the automatic camera panning gives life to an otherwise too static standby screen, and walking on a beach without the usual cliffs and rocks you’re gonna be climbing the whole game is a change of pace.

The story allows you to explore the intimate parts of normal people, as Riley and Jacobs are not that different from any of us, and the plot leads you to explore some of the darker sides of their personality along with both their past and future, which is all relevant for your final choices in the game. But when it all comes full circle, it feels too inconclusive. Little plot twists are dropped here and there on their own, but they could have been more cohesive and integrated with each other. It doesn’t help that, while the acclaimed first game had its tale unfold around a group of teenagers, here the focal point is Riley with Jacob as the constant sparring partner. There’s a lack of opportunities to scramble the cards, to have different inputs. The contacts on the walkie-talkie could be nothing more than external consultants if you desire so. It’s up to you to define how reluctant or patient the main character is gonna be.

There’s not a real inventory to manage. The collectibles, as your items are explicitly called, are mainly letters that you find throughout the game, identified as blinking objects on screen, that help you learn more about some of the characters, but that’s it. There’s a pair of other items you’ll find that the game will automatically integrate and use. At one point it seemed like there was a bug with one of the items. I was supposed to be able to call one of the characters and tell him we had something he wanted, but the game didn’t allow me to. Since it was just a side quest, I kept playing without completing it, but it was disappointing. There were a few other moments where Oxenfree 2 seemed broken, as well: seeing Jacob losing orientation and being out of control is a one of a kind and just by moving over to another screen everything wraps up, a puzzle being almost impossible to solve because the controls aren’t working, or a clickable item that you aren’t able to approach and select. It shouldn’t give players many headaches, but there’s more than a lack of polish in some instances.

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals ends up being a decent follow-up of a first chapter that had a major impact. Regardless of some improvements and the attention it deserves, it in no way exceeds the previous game, nor does it live up to any major expectation the long wait might have created, and, not being exactly fulfilling, it falls a little short, like it’s overall playthrough length.