Oxenfree 2 has been delayed

Night School Studio has delayed its “What's going on with that radio?” spook-em-up Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals. Originally announced with a release date of fall 2021, then pushed into 2022, it's now been delayed into next year. “Seeing your fan art, reading your excited comments, and connecting with you fuels our ambition to make this our best game yet”, Night School said on Twitter. “To make OXENFREE II truly special and add more localizations, we're moving our release window to 2023.”

The original Oxenfree made our list of the best horror games thanks to its eerie atmosphere, clever twist on the stranded-teenagers subgenre, and excellent dialogue. In his Oxenfree review, Andy Kelly wrote, “Often, conversations in videogames sound like two people taking turns to read out lines. But in Oxenfree the lines flow together seamlessly, and you can respond at any time by selecting one of three answers. The characters will even react to your silence if you don’t answer them, or if you decide to walk away and ignore them. This, combined with fantastic writing and voice acting, makes Oxenfree one of the best virtual recreations of real humans talking to each other—which is lucky, because the dialogue is almost non-stop.”

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals will star a new protagonist who returns to her hometown, a coastal community called Camena, and finds it besieged by unnatural electromagnetic phenomena. Like the original it promises to have choices that matter and an in-depth dialogue system, with a new mechanic that lets you use your walkie-talkie to start a conversation on your own time wherever you are.

Night School released a comedy game called Afterparty in 2019, which didn't make quite as big a splash as its innovative debut. The indie studio was then bought by Netflix in 2021, and released a mobile edition of Oxenfree through them—Netflix remains dedicated to mobile games, meaning that even though its library includes games like Into the Breach, Moonlighter, and Oxenfree you can't play them on the laptop you probably watch Netflix on. Oxenfree 2 will still come out on PC, however, and will be available on Steam next year.