Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals review

When I really care about a game’s characters I’ll stop walking when they launch into spontaneous character-building conversations, because I’m afraid I might cross some invisible line that triggers more plot-critical dialogue to override it. What if I never hear the end of that story Garrus was telling Liara? It’s unthinkable. Though I didn’t dislike the talkative teenagers stranded on a spooky island in the original Oxenfree back in 2016, I never stopped walking to listen to them chat.

Partly that was because they’d return to important topics after being interrupted, with seamless “like I was saying” asides. Mostly it was because they said so much about so little I never felt at risk of not hearing something I was going to care about. If the trains run every five minutes, you’re not bothered about missing one.

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals is about adults, and that changes things. It’s still a game of criss-crossing a haunted 2.5-dimensional slice of the Pacific Northwest (by clicking where you want to go or holding down the movement keys, it’s not a platformer) while regularly tuning your radio to Eerie Dead People Talk Shit 102.1FM. There’s something strange going on in the town of Camena, you see, and you’ve been hired to investigate anomalous radio signals by placing transmitters at certain locations in the nearby countryside.