Every town has that one story.
A campsite where people mysteriously vanish. A bridge that’s always cold, even in summer. Woods where a disturbed killer still wanders the trail. In Camena — a community in Northern Oregon — that story is about a submarine from World War 2 and a collection of lost and terrifying spirits.
Hi! I’m Adam, co-founder of Night School Studio and lead writer of Oxenfree. I’m also co-writer of Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, which I am super excited to finally announce is coming to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 by popular demand. I’m happy to at last be able to start sharing a few details of the next chapter of the Oxenfree world, that spooky universe filled with strange apparitions and floating triangles and women with interesting hair choices.
Previously, on…
In Oxenfree (2016), a high schooler named Alex, her stepbrother Jonas and a few of their friends unwittingly discover that Camena’s town legend is actually real. Planning to celebrate the school year’s end with an overnight stay on Edwards Island — once a military base, now a tourist hot spot — they accidentally “tune” into a ghostly signal, opening a dimensional rift between time. The rift allows a horde of vengeful ghosts to come into our reality, who hope to take the teenagers’ lives as their own. Stuck offshore with no ability to contact anyone for help, Alex is forced to fend off the ghosts, reveal the true history of the mysterious island, and come to terms with her own guilt over the death of her brother, Michael, a year earlier. Happy ending, right?
BUT! It turns out, there’s more to the story…
Who is Riley?
In Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, you play as Riley Poverly. If you’ve watched our teaser trailer, she’s the one with the flashlight, running around in that snazzy yellow vest. In Oxenfree, our characters were just finishing high school, and entering that period of time in their lives when they get to decide who they really want to be. Riley had that moment long ago, and is now grappling with the repercussions of post-adolescence. Were the choices she made the right ones for her? Is she who she really wants to be?
Born and raised in Camena to a veteran father and an absent mother, Riley moved away at the first opportunity, bouncing around between cities and jobs in an attempt to conjure up some direction in her life. Now, a recent change has pushed her to return to her old hometown, to take an entry-level job as an environmental researcher.
Mysteries of Camena
You see, the last couple of months have been odd ones for Camena. Unnaturally occurring electromagnetic waves have been interfering with the electrical and radio equipment around the small coastal town. TVs have been turning on and off. Planes have lost radar. Stations can’t transmit their signals through static. A research group from a nearby college has been contracted to study the phenomena and to trace the source of whatever’s causing the interference. Riley’s job, as a new, freshly hired research assistant — is to do the grunt work: plant radio transmitters in prescribed areas and report back the data those transmitters collect. Easy!
Until… well… things start going… weird.
Stay Tuned
In Oxenfree II, you’ll use much of the same tools as the original Oxenfree, a narrative game revolving around a robust conversation system and a radio that tunes into supernatural signals.
I wish I could get into more of the game’s story, characters and villains and what happens if you go into the old mining town, Garland, and I want to show you all the weird time travel stuff and what Time Tears are but the rest of the team is dragging me away from the keyboard now.
Thanks for reading!
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