Every Netflix user gets day one access to Oxenfree 2 – one of the best narrative games of the summer

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals is clever. It’s doing something only games can do, blending the past, present, and future in real time. For the past several years, the first game in the series has been projecting ominous and strange messages to players via the in-game radio. if you start oxen free now, you’ll hear things that weren’t there at launch: aberrant snippets of conversations and schisms in reality that Parentage (the game’s villains) are supposedly patching through space, time, and reality.

However, this is par for the course at Oxenfree. The series is young, but it already has a reputation among developers and fans of indie games as one of the most atmospheric and uncomfortable storytelling experiences of the past generation. It was a story about pain, guilt, and ghosting, told through an innocent and grounded lens through a group of kids who accidentally stumble upon a phenomenon no one could understand.

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals builds on these solid foundations. Instead of a group of children looking tentatively into their future, the sequel opens with a reluctant homecoming. The protagonist Riley Poverly returns to her childhood home and discovers that nothing is as she left it, but everything is more or less the same. I’m sure any of you who have moved and been called back for reasons beyond your control will know what I mean.

Here in Oxenfree 2, the game’s cast is older and focuses on people dealing with the decisions they made in their teens, without laying the groundwork for the kind of adults they will be. Half-remembered acquaintances awkwardly ask if you remember them, unresolved personal dramas you ran away from years ago begin to resurface. It’s hard to concentrate on your job, investigating supernatural phenomena, with all these little problems gnawing at your subconscious.

The game structure is somewhat linear at first, but then it starts to open up; Plant beacons, report your finds, start chatting with the locals, and poke your nose into their own awkward lives. Camena’s island setting is a strange place, and it attracts strange people. You can get in touch with all of them on your walkie-talkie, or catch up on the local goings-on through your radio. It’s light on gameplay and heavy on story, much like the first. But that’s what you want out of this; a cerebral and reflective radio drama. All underscored by a great soundtrack (the original Oxenfree has one of the best modern soundtracks in gaming, name me).

This is a game for the kind of weirdo nerds who were members of the AV Club, probably written by the kind of weirdo nerds who were the heads of the AV Club, and the respect and reverence he has for old technology is proudly displayed throughout. his sleeve. . It’s a quietly sad game for quietly sad people, taking pride in its weird status and really leaning into its niche to provide the kind of storytelling, backed by the kind of performances, that black coffee drinkers will swoon over.

So it’s only fitting that the game be streamed to the masses via Netflix (as was the plan since Netflix picked up developer Night School Studio in 2021). Similar to the first, it’s coming to PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC, and Nintendo Switch, but anyone with a Netflix account will be able to play it on mobile. This massive, mainstream audience is what I hope will bite. Oxenfree is the perfect series for people who don’t know what games can really do when it comes to story; it’s low-stakes, low-intensity, story-rich, and emotionally rewarding.

It’s a game that understands the pressure of being a confused adult in today’s world. It’s a game that understands what it’s like to exist in a reality that’s threatened, be it by socioeconomic uncertainty, a climate catastrophe, or a strange rift in space/time eating away at the edge of reality. It is a game that promises to offer something special and knows how to get into your head.

If you haven’t played the first one, you have until July 12 to do so. Because you don’t want to skip Oxenfree 2 when it’s released.