Spirits of the radio
A spooky summertime adventure is in store for July. Night School Studio’s Oxenfree II: Lost Signals is scheduled to launch on July 12, 2023.
The follow-up to 2016’s Oxenfree sees protagonist Riley Poverly return to her hometown in Camena. As a newly hired research assistant, she’s investigating the local phenomena that’s been interfering with electronics and radios. Her job is to set up radio transmitters around certain areas and report the data. Should be easy, right?
Well, get a cult and some spirits involved, and you’ve got a long night ahead. Much like the first Oxenfree, choices will shape your story and future, as you deal with the strange oddities creating all these disturbances. As shown in a trailer during today’s Nintendo Indie World Showcase, things may not always go as planned.
All the outs in free
Oxenfree II sees Night School returning to the spooky 2016 adventure, following 2019’s partying romp through the underworld in Afterparty and a few other projects.
Meanwhile, it’s also Night School’s newest project under Netflix, as the studio was acquired by the streaming giant in 2021. It’s nice to see that the acquisition didn’t cancel the studio’s plans for a sequel at the time.
It’s exciting to see Oxenfree II get a date locked in, and to have it during the summer too. Sure, the original was released in January 2016, but it’s a distinctly “summer” game to me. It’s about a bunch of angsty, worrying teens on their final summer vacation, and absolutely worth your time ahead of the sequel’s launch. And with a July launch, the sequel is also thankfully avoiding the traffic jam of games in June.
Oxenfree II: Lost Signals hits Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PS5, PC via Steam, and the Netflix platform on July 12, 2023.
