It looks like the team at Night School Studio is expanding its time looping shenanigans with portals to alternate timelines in Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals, with new gameplay and details revealed. This new backstage peek at the follow-up to 2016’s Oxenfree was shown at the Tribeca Games Showcase portion of this year’s Summer Games Festival. Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals debuted at Nintendo’s Indie World showcase in 2021.
In the first Oxenfree, players engaged in a dynamic dialogue-driven graphical adventure starring a girl named Alex who accidentally releases a supernatural force with her old radio, trapping herself and her friends inside a time loop. The dialogue choices made by the player and the manner in which they respond (i.e., responding after someone finishes speaking or interrupting them) directly affected not only Alex’s relationships with them but the outcome of their fates in the game’s final events. On the flip side of the gameplay, players utilize Alex’s radio frequencies to interact with the paranormal forces and solve the puzzles brought on by the temporal disturbances. In Oxenfree 2, players control newcomer Riley as she investigates the neighboring coastal town of Camena five years after the previous game. With Oxenfree 2, Night School Studio hopes to expand upon all aspects of the first game including dialogue options, puzzle-solving, and, of course, the time mechanics of the temporal disturbances.
In a trailer published by TheGameAwards for Summer Game Fest 2022, Night School Studio previewed the new alternate timeline portal mechanics of Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals. Oxenfree players can use Riley’s radio to open portals into alternate timelines, allowing further exploration into areas normally impeded. Game director Bryant Cannon explains the alternate timelines: “[allow] the player to explore the possibility of going back and changing the past.” However, as expected, Night School Studio does warn that it may have dire consequences. “Portals are fascinating, very beautiful, very mysterious but ultimately very dangerous,” says writer Adam Esquenazi Douglas. While the trailer doesn’t show much of the time portals functionality beyond this, studio director Sean Krankel hints at other features these mechanics will have, noting:
“The player gets to open these portals in time and go through them and talk to these other ghostly characters. Portals are getting opened and they don’t want it to happen and so they’ve gotta deal with the ramifications of that.”
Time travel is always enticing and seems to serve as a necessary gameplay mechanic in Oxenfree 2. Any Doctor Strange fan will know of the potential perils of creating time rifts and portals, and it will be interesting to see how Oxenfree develops on its original ideas. As further news on Oxenfree 2’s time travel releases, it might be exciting to see what dynamic consequences are in store, especially if it means more options for replayability. While a firm release date for the game hasn’t yet been set, the title seems to still be on track for a 2022 release, meaning fans shouldn’t have long to wait to find out for themselves.
Oxenfree 2 aims to go beyond the simple loops of the first game with its portals to alternate timelines. Though a single playthrough of the first Oxenfree is a relatively brief experience, the multiple dialogue options that determine events within the story provide the player ample motivation to replay. While it’s too early to tell how much an impact the alternate timelines will have in OxenFree 2: Lost Signals, the prospects are very encouraging for those who value replayability.
