Strawberry Loft

You don’t always run away from home; sometimes you run to it. Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals returns the player to Camena, the small mountain town we were told about but never saw in the original Oxenfree game. Riley, the player character, left Camena to escape bad memories, but goes back hoping to find some guidance. She ends up being a form of divine intervention saving several souls along the way to heal herself. Lost Signals had big shoes to fill because I love the original Oxenfree game, which I have done a blog for. I think Lost Signals kept a lot of the parts of Oxenfree that made the game stand out, especially with the nonlinear story telling. Lost Signals weaves its story carefully through time jumps, which feel disorienting at first, but all the pieces eventually come together. It all starts with a weird electrical storm and a transmitter.

Riley left Camena to find direction for herself and instead lost herself to alcoholism and depression. At 32, Riley feels like she’s made nothing of herself and returns home to Camena, where she takes a job placing transmitters so local environmental researchers can study an electrical storm in the area. Riley isn’t proud of herself or her lack of accomplishments coming back feeling like she left for nothing, and leaving home wasn’t the cure all from her dysfunctional family she thought it would be. Riley’s coworker for the night, Jacob, on the other hand, has never left Camena. Jacob brings up remembering Riley from high school and sounds kind of jealous that she made it out of town. He never left town or the home he grew up in, inheriting his childhood home from his caring parents. He made a name for himself as the town handyman, doing all sorts of odd jobs. He knows a little bit about everything, which always comes in handy. He has it in his head though, that getting to leave means Riley got to live, and he’s kind of starstruck, not knowing the full truth.

Looking back on your short adult life in your 30s and comparing it to your friends, unfortunately feels all too common. Sometimes it blinds you from the amazing things you’ve accomplished that deserve to be bragged about more. Jacob runs a successful business and is well-liked by everyone who talks about him; he should be proud of himself. On the other side of the coin, you never really know the full extent of what someone else went through. Jacob assumes Riley’s life was filled with adventure because she got away and got that dream chance to start over and reinvent herself. He doesn’t know that she suffered in the world alone and is now trying to put the broken pieces of her life back together.

Lost Signals is about growing with the hardships of life or letting them drag you under. After placing the first transmitter, Riley and Jacob see a familiar triangle in the sky, and Camena begins to unravel. The ghosts of the USS Kanaloa or The Sunken start messing with time now, seemingly free from Edwards Island due to the transmitter signals. Three teens with different troubles at home are the ones helping the spirits escape the time portal prison in exchange for anything they desire. Violet and Charlie are two of the young teens who feel unseen and unloved by their parents. Both Charlie and Violet become possessed by the Sunken at one point, and it’s up to Riley to save them and then talk them out of making deals with otherworldly entities. The player has to make an important decision when talking to the teens: to be comforting and gentle, to be their friend, or to yell and escalate the situation. For me, playing as Riely, it felt important to be patient and kind with the teens, which became even more important during a late game reveal. Riley sees a vision of a kid she doesn’t know, but slowly becomes more comfortable with each time she is possessed by the Sunken. It’s a different space in time and each time the player chooses how Riley acts around this stranger they’re slowly getting to know. This stranger is Rex, and as Riley reveals to Jacob, she’s pregnant. Rex is her unborn son. That’s why she came back to Camena to reconcile with her estranged father and decide what to do next. She never pictured herself as a single mother.

The reveal of Riley being pregnant surprised me, even though I sort of saw it coming with Rex. I believe the game is showing us what kind of mother Riley could be if given the chance. The player sees a reality where Riley keeps Rex and raises him the way her father raised her, in Camena, attuned to the wilderness. Riley admits she fell out of touch with her dad when she left town, which means she lost her support system when she moved, which could contribute to the path she went down. Seeing flashbacks in time loops with Riley and her dad against scenes with Riley and Rex, Riley is her father’s daughter. She channels him perfectly in the moments we see her raise, Rex. On top of that, like her father, she is doing it alone. Her father loves her more than I think she realizes, and he left a heavy impression on her. Lost Signals successfully got me to cry when Riley speaks to an older version of Rex who loves his mom because  while he admits she wasn’t perfect, she loved him immensely. Riley is distraught, expressing that she’s afraid she won’t be able to be that mom for him. Rex tells her she won’t know unless she escapes the time loop and tries. It was touching.

Previously, I mentioned there were three teens helping the Sunken escape and glossed over one, the ringleader, Oliva. A tragic teen who lost her parents in a plane crash and was promised by the Sunken that she could see them again if she released them. Releasing them meant trapping Oliva in time while the Sunken take her body, making it their personal puppet. They prey on her despair, using it to manipulate her. Olivia used the same promises to manipulate her friends into helping, putting them all in danger. No matter how hard I tried, it felt impossible to show Olivia Riley wasn’t the bad guy and wanted to help her. Olivia’s main motive was to see her parents, and she would see them no matter who she had to sacrifice. Which is kind of why I sacrificed her; it made the most sense to me, but I know there is a lot of discussion around it.

At the end of Lost Signals, the player must pick who they’re sacrificing to the cursed time loop of Edwards Island. The player can choose between Riley, which would make Rex never exist, Olivia, which reunites her with her parents caught in a loop before they take their final plane, or Jacob, who has his dog Athena waiting for him in Camena. I thought this was a hard choice, especially since Alex is the one who orchestrated this all. If you’ve played the first Oxenfree game, Alex and her friends originally opened the portal, getting stuck in a time loop just like the sunken. Alex is trying to steal the bodies of Olivia and her friends to live again. It kind of broke my heart to see the character we played as in the last game become the monster. I was kind of in disbelief at first, but it was also interesting to see what the time loop does to people. It reminds you the Sunken were people desperate to live again, just like Alex and her friends. Alex does end up helping the player in the end, again, unfortunately, by sacrificing a character.

For me, the final decision of who to send and doom in the time loop portal was either Olivia or Riley; it was never Jacob. Lost Signals is a narrative heavy game, and most of it is between Riley and Jacob as they traverse Camena to place more transmitters. Riley and Jacob spend their supernatural night getting to know each other and maybe confessing insecurities they wouldn’t tell just anyone. Things just slip out when you’re up against supernatural time-manipulating forces. Jacob is odd and awkward, but kind. He believes in superstitions and is honest about not being good at climbing, asking Riley to take alternative routes so he can join. If the player accommodates him by taking easier routes and following his superstitious traditions like spitting for a bridge for goods luck, I feel like Jacob opens up to Riley more. There are options to belittle and ignore Jacob, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Jacob was the comic relief that was needed after Riley was possessed and tormented by visions of her past and possible future. He’s a nice balance to Riley is driven moving forward without thinking too much about the consequences for herself. Jacob is cautious, worrying about others, especially Riley getting worried when she leaps over large crevices, barely making it between the rocky ledges. He also tells her to be careful walking on logs because they could be slippery. The whole game, Jacob is looking for his dog Athena and finds her right before the final showdown on Edwards Island. In that moment, you can ask Jacob not to come with you and to stay behind in Camena. I tried to get him to stay behind, but Jacob is persistent, so I took him along we had come that far together, it only felt right. On the boat ride to Edwards Island, Jacob reveals he wished he did something meaningful with his life. He wanted his name to still be mentioned after he was gone. During the final decision of who would sacrifice themselves, Jacob was just looking into the portal, and I almost feel like the game wanted you to sacrifice Jacob, but that wouldn’t fulfill his dream to do something meaningful. No one would know, besides Riley and Olivia, if they remembered after the time loop resets. To me, Olivia was the best option, and in the end, we hear an audio clip of her being reunited in a pocket of time with her parents.

The game play for Lost Signals is walking, talking, and some puzzle solving. If you like a game with dialogue options, this game is all dialogue options. You can make Riley as friendly or rude as you want. There are several different types of puzzles in the game, terrain puzzles that unlocked later paths, and time distortion puzzles allowing the player to experience the same locations in different time periods. Being temporarily sent back in time was an especially neat use of the time tears, making it possible for Riley to enter a mine that collapsed in the future but was open at some point in the past. There were also puzzles for time loop machines that I still have no idea how I solved the one that the player has to create geometric shapes that stack over each other. It was a lot of just playing with the buttons and hoping for the best. I don’t think Lost Signals was as scary as the original Oxenfree game; there was a lack of jump scares. I didn’t gasp as much. It felt more like an action-adventure than a horror. There were some spooky, unsettling parts though, especially around the possession scenes.

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals is another well-done game from Night School Studios. I thoroughly enjoyed playing, finishing one play through in 7 hours. I think it warrants a few playthroughs to see the different endings, and there are some extra things I realized later that I missed. In the game, you get a walkie-talkie that can be used to talk to different characters that the player will never see. It’s kind of like listening to interactive fairy tales, especially with the sailor. I did not play with the walkie enough, and think going back for those extra interactions alone is worth it. If you play Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals, make sure to leave no stone unturned.