I don’t believe any genre depends as much on personal taste, as Horror does. For some people, there is nothing scarier than staring down a necromorph in Dead Space, where for others that game is an action-filled romp through space. Some might be terrified of the Xenomorph that hunts you through the Sevastapol in Alien: Isolation, where others could find its instant death screens more frustrating than fear-inducing. It all depends on the player, and how the game relates to their fears and their worries. Sometimes a piece of horror media can get right in your head, the way Soma does, but sometimes horror doesn’t have to be scary at all, sometimes it’s just ghost stories shared with friends around a campfire. A cosy kind of horror, but the kind that speaks to real fears and insecurities we share. In 2017 on a whim, I bought two games that were on sale on recommendations from a friend. One of these was Night in the Woods, and the other was Oxenfree and both of them gave me spooky stories told by firelight vibes and when I heard Oxefree was getting a sequel I was really pleased. Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals was released in July 2023, and unfortunately came out in between a few bigger games I had already bought. It stayed on my wishlist though and I finally jumped in around Halloween 2023 looking for the same cozy horror feel as its predecessor.
I have communed with the dead, tuned radio signals, and travelled through time for 22 hours in my journey to earn Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals’ Platinum trophy, and here is my review.
The main premise of Oxenfree and its sequel is a simple hook, a ghost story like the ones you used to hear from your cousin’s friend who went to another school. If you go to Edwards Island and tune into certain radio frequencies, you can hear some spooky stuff. The first game had a group of teenagers going to the yearly party on the Island, where one of them decides to test this campfire tale, and inadvertently rips a hole in time and space. It was a great coming-of-age story with the teens facing the terrors of ghosts and time-loops and the fallout of these challenges on their relationships. Oxenfree 2 picks up 5 years after the events of the first game and you play as Riley, a 30-something who has returned home to Camena after a long time away to assist with researching some weird radio issues that have started appearing. Shortly after you arrive meet your colleague Jacob who tells you that the strange radio behaviour used to be limited to the nearby Edwards Island, but has recently reached the coast. As expected, things go wrong and a night of hauntings begins.
The gameplay in Oxenfree 2 is simple and pretty much unchanged from its predecessor. You spend a lot of the game walking and talking. Conversations happen in real time, and at certain points, you are given options to reply or you can choose to let the timer run down and not say anything at all. Most of these conversations are with Jacob, who is your companion for the majority of the game, but there are other characters you can talk to. The options you pick have an effect on how characters perceive Riley, and sometimes how they react to her, and in some cases affect the endings you have open to you. This is really the bulk of the gameplay, learning about the world and the characters around you, and deciding how Riley will interact with these. There are some puzzles, involving changing radio waves into diamonds, but these are few and far between. There was one puzzle I liked that involved trying to figure out the correct time to open a rift into, and I liked how the game rewarded you for trying incorrect answers with neat little bits of history, but the fact that it happens quite late in the game and only once was a little disappointing.
Aside from this the main gameplay function is your Radio. For the most part, you will use to this tune into tears in time or open gates by finding the correct frequency. The more interesting mechanic is that as you scan between the different frequencies, at certain points you can hear radio stations, or creepy noises depending on where you are. Some of these are simple, like the Advice Line for Camena High School, or the Sports Channel and entertaining enough, but others are much more interesting and it is worth checking these out each time you enter a new area.
With the bulk of the game being dialogue focussed, Oxenfree 2 needed to really nail the back and forth chatter, especially with its two leads, and I feel like, while not being quite as well written as the first game, it still does a great job. Dialogue felt natural and realistic, and with the opportunity to interrupt or ignore what was being said it really felt like actual conversations were taking place. All of the characters felt like real people, who had their own anxieties and fears and wants. Even if I preferred the relationships and character moments of the first game, I felt Oxenfree 2 did a stellar job.
What really interested me was how your dialogue choices, or lack of them, can change your perception of a character. On my first playthrough I played Riley as open, honest and understanding, and I used every possible chance to interact with Jacob, asking questions, supporting him and eventually becoming his friend. By the end of this playthrough I saw him as an awkward but generally nice person, who was a little lonely and needed a bit of encouragement to try new things. I liked him.
On my second playthrough, for trophy purposes, I was mean to him, ignoring almost any attempt he made to talk, unless it was to put him down or tell him to be quiet. I don’t know if it was a change in my mindset, or if it was intentional on the games part, but this time around I did not like Jacob at all. I thought he was whiney, he bemoaned the privileges he did have and seemed to make no attempt to change or improve the situation he clearly hated and he just would not shut up. I also didn’t pet his dog on my second playthrough, which was a difficult decision to live with.
When I sat back to think on the differences between each playthrough though, I couldn’t remember much in the way of completely new things Jacob said, he talked less than he did on my first playthrough but it grated on me more. I think that is a credit to the writers that such a simple change on the player’s end could have such an effect on how I saw him as a character.
There are a few other characters you meet, and I don’t want to spoil anything major, but there are missable conversations you can have using your Walkie-Talkie. These Walkie-Talkie conversations are all side characters but I loved talking to them. Once you have started the conversation and learned their channel on the Walkie, you can call them up in different areas to continue conversations with them as they have their own adventures in the nearby area. My favourite of these was a fisherman named Nick, who is out in a boat just off the coast of Camena. Each of these Walkie contacts has a small side quest related to them which is mostly just talking to them and at certain points picking the correct option to finish the questline. I wish there had been more of them, or that they had lasted a bit longer, as by the last third of the game, the radio had gone pretty quiet and I missed hearing Nick’s descriptions of the Sea, or Maria’s boy troubles.
The atmosphere in Oxenfree 2 really drives a sense of familiarity and nostalgia tinged with anxiety that a lot of horror plays upon. Its use of music is incredibly good and reminiscent of shows like Stranger Things in the way that it uses the ambient synth music to build a sense of dread and adventure at the same time. The watercolour style backgrounds for each area are gorgeous and full of detail. I loved running through horseshoe bay with the moon over the beach, or climbing and running around the Garland Ghost town area, all of them look so beautiful and so lonely as you explore them.
One of the driving forces behind the atmosphere buildup are the sound effects and small visual touches that really push the sense of unease, the loud static noises that interrupt conversations, or the warping of the screen to make it look like the signal is stuttering when you are dealing with the ghosts are really well done. The voice acting for all of the characters is great, especially the way that the sunken communicate, which returns from the first game, and it’s still just as creepy and unnerving. Despite the game never really reaching a moment that is outright scary, at least in my experience of it, it often is unsettling and creepy in the way that sticks with you, even after you have turned the game off.
The story Oxenfree 2 tells is an enjoyable one, the journey the characters go on both physically through Camena and spiritually are engaging and entertaining and in my opinion thought provoking. Ghost stories make for great metaphors about being trapped and stuck in place, haunting the person you are supposed to be with regrets or pain from your past, and Oxenfree 2 seems to take this metaphor and run with it. Every character is stuck somewhere, much like the ghosts of the Sunken that haunt them, and watching the characters interact and change throughout the night was my favourite part of the game. Without spoiling any of the story, I loved the way the night unfolds for each character, and the endings were really satisfying to see. I will say that as much as I enjoyed all the characters and the dialogue between them, I don’t think it ever reached the same heights that the original Oxenfree did for me.
So lastly lets talk about the Trophies and Achievements and how you can earn the Platinum Trophy Leave. Is. Possible. Just be aware there will be major story spoilers ahead.
Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals isn’t a long game at all, it took me 22 hours to do 4 playthroughs of the game, and that was because I made a mistake on my third playthrough and had to do another one. I believe it is possible to get the Platinum in two playthroughs by backing up your save at the final choice, but a third playthrough is probably easier to make sure you don’t miss anything. This is because some of the trophies require quite specific actions to unlock.
There are quite a lot of missable trophies and certain trophies will lock you out of other trophies which is why you need to do multiple playthroughs. 4 of the trophies are unmissable story progress related ones, and three of them are tied to each of the endings you can earn. At the end of the game you have a choice of characters to send through a portal to seal the sunken away. Sending Olivia through the portal or sending Riley through, do not need any extra work to do. To send Jacob through the portal however, you need to not become his friend. He will only go through the portal if he believes he has nothing keeping him in Camena. Just ignore most of his dialogue unless there is a response that is mean to him or lie to him and you should be able to avoid befriending him to earn this.
Then there are trophies related to each of the other characters. You must make friends with Jacob to earn the 3am Food Friends trophy, and this is relatively easy to do. Always tell him the truth, ask him questions and be supportive of him throughout the night and tell him about Riley’s pregnancy. At some point before heading to Garland he will talk to you about asking a stupid question and ask if you are friends. Say yes and the trophy will unlock.
You also need to befriend the three teenages you meet on your travels around Camena. Violet, Charlie and Olivia. There are some quite specific steps to each of these but in general for Violet just be nice to her, tell her things aren’t her fault and defend her when Olivia gets mad at her.
For Charlie you need to defend him from Jacob, and ask him questions in a calm way.
Olivia is definitely the hardest to befriend and this trophy was the reason I had to do an extra playthrough. For Olivia you need to be sympathetic to her, pick any option that has “I’m sorry” in it, and when you are in Garland wait around for a second radio conversation where you can offer to still be friends oh and do not break her radio when given the option. The secret trick to her trophy though, is you can only befriend one of the other two teens. If you befriend both she feels alienated and like you’ve turned them against her. In my last run I found it easier to befriend Violet and just let Jacob hit Charlie to make sure he wasn’t my friend. Also, perhaps obviously but you can’t get this trophy if you send Olivia through the portal. As I said, some of these trophies work against each other so multiple playthroughs are necessary, and if you don’t get the trophies for friendships in your first playthrough then there are guides out there that can help you pick the right dialogue options.
There are also trophies for radio conversations. Evelyn, Nick and Hank are automatically added to your radio contacts but Ranger Shelley and Maria can be missed. To meet Shelley, when you get to the ranger station on the way to placing the third transmitter, there is a phone, use the redial option and you can talk to Shelley. For Maria you will need to go to Walkie channel 8 and say hello, this will inform you of an advice line that is on 88.1 on the radio. Keep checking in on this frequency to hear a message that the advice line is open, then use your walkie to talk to Maria and add her as a contact.
For all of the radio contacts, every time you enter a new screen, pull up the Walkie and see if there is new dialogue with them. Make sure you always exhaust all the dialogue and be friendly and nice to them. At certain points in the conversation some important options will come up.
For Maria, tell her to ask Charlie out. For Nick you need to encourage him to explore and go through the portal he finds. For Shelley tell her to be safe and eventually you will get a phone call outside Funnies shop giving you a warning about Shelley. Relay this warning on to her and tell her to stay inside. For Evelyn make sure you radio her as soon as you put a transmitter down and can use your radio and lastly for Hank, you will need to use his EMF devices in Garland to go back in time to 1930, talk to the guy at the bench to get a photo and then radio Hank about it. Once this conversation is done, go back to Horseshoe beach and go into the cave Riley found behind a boulder. Pick up the random Shoe here and deliver it to Hanks safebox in Garland. Lastly there is a secret conversation you can miss with a young Jacob. When you plant the transmitter in Garland, he will fall through a roof. Instead of immediately chasing him, use your radio to talk to Evelyn, and then wait. You will get a radio call from someone and speaking to him will get you the trophy.
There are also 13 collectible letters you will need to find around Camena. These appear as glowing dots on the screen, but some of them require some backtracking to find. You can go get these any time you want before you leave Camena in the boat, but only 12 are findable immediately. There are 4 trophies related to getting the initial 12 letters, and once you have them all, a 13th will appear near Jacob’s cabin. This will earn you the One Last Mystery trophy.
Finally there are a few miscellaneous trophies you will need to look out for as you play. The first of these, is in the caves after using the first time rift. Jacob will ask you to play a word game with him. Select the options, Santa, Fourteen and Loudly for the Merry Scary Christmas trophy. Next when you get to the community centre when you are trying to stop Olivia from using her radio, try to be quick and stop her from tuning the portal. Its fine if she is searching for the right signal, but if she finds it and starts to create the portal then you will have failed. You can make this easier by trying to do it on the run where you have befriended both Violet and Charlie as they will get in her way and give you more time to reach the radio. If you are fast enough you will earn the On Top of Things trophy. When given the option just after this, smash her radio for Problem Solved and Shattered. As I mentioned before, these trophies seem to work against befriending Olivia so do these on a separate playthrough.
Lastly, the make or break trophies in the game, just before you get on the boat to leave Camena you find a dog. There is a trophy for petting the dog, and a trophy for not petting the dog. This is likely to be the hardest trophy in the game, as the dog is very cute. If you are a monster and can manage it though then the Platinum will be yours.
Ultimately I really enjoyed my time with Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals. It was a great story with interesting characters and a really nice spooky vibe. I do wish it had done a bit more to improve itself over its predecessor though. More Radio interactions, more contacts on the Walkie-Talkie, and I think more time spent with each of the teenage characters would have been great. Despite that though, it is a game I would definitely recommend if you are a fan of ghost stories or character driven story games.
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