You’d be forgiven for having no clue that Netflix was trying to give you video games, especially if you don’t watch movies on your phone or tablet. But the streaming service has been investing more and more in games over the last few years, and this month, a major new release is dropping on Netflix at the same time it’s landing on other consoles. And lucky for all of us, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, the sequel to a 2016 indie sleeper hit, is well worth playing.
Oxenfree II is on almost every platform, including PC, Nintendo Switch, and the PlayStation 4 and 5, and those are all good ways to play it. But if you’re ok with playing it on your phone or tablet, Netflix is trying to give you a great game for free.
What is Oxenfree II?
Netflix is an almost laughably appropriate home for Oxenfree II. Its themes, which include the angst of growing up and the terror of the unknown, underpin some of Netflix’s biggest hits, including Stranger Things and Wednesday. But Oxenfree II’s story feels a little closer to the literary inspirations of the cinematic influences behind those other Netflix hits—if you grew up reading Stephen King or S.E. Hinton, there’s a good chance you’ll find something interesting here.
Oxenfree II is spooky, but it’s easy to play and understand. In the game, you navigate around the coastal town of Camena and the surrounding forest and mountain using either a controller or tapping on your mobile device’s touchscreen, with prompts to select responses to the comments and stories unfolding around you. This isn’t a game about fast reactions or action. It’s about people in a weird situation with very normal problems and conflicts, and most of what you do is wander around and talk with people.
You play as Riley, a young woman whose life has gone a bit off the rails after a stint in the military. To make ends meet, she takes a job with an environmental research group studying mysterious signals on an island off the coast of Riley’s childhood home. Things get weird immediately, both in the mundane, everyday sense—Riley is forced to confront her angst and disaffection as she runs into places and people from her past—and the weird, including electromagnetic ghosts and other minor problems like the potential collapse of time, space, and reality.
You navigate conversations with colleagues or others, guiding them in somewhat different directions, but there are also puzzles. These often involve manipulating the dial of a radio or operating other scientific equipment in ways that are very, very video game-y, but it’s all pretty charming. The only real timing-based interaction involves responses to conversations, which can sometimes be time-limited, and even then, missing the chance to interject is generally just a minor potential omission of context or character development. It’s a very easy game to play, but presents a lot of opportunities to dive deeper and learn more about it.
How to download Oxenfree II (and a lot of other games) via Netflix
First, a caveat: Netflix games are currently only available on mobile devices: iPhones, iPads, and Android phones and tablets. There are rumors that Netflix’s games will come to TVs some time in 2023, but mobile devices are your only option for now (unless you connect them to a TV). This isn’t the worst option, if you’re ok with some weird black bars around the game. Oxenfree II plays great with a wireless controller on iPad, and I didn’t notice any performance or latency problems while playing on my iPad Pro connected to a 4K TV.
But to play a game on Netflix, you have to download it—after you find it. First, make sure Netflix is installed on your device and updated to the latest version. From there, you have two options. You can open the Netflix app, click Downloads in the bar along the bottom, and you’ll see the content you’ve downloaded for offline viewing. Underneath that content, you’ll see a button that says See What You Can Download. Tapping on that will take you to a menu of options, including Mobile Games. You’ll find Oxenfree II here, along with a number of other titles (including the original Oxenfree, if you’re so inclined).
You can also open the iOS App Store or Google Play Store, type “Netflix Games” into the search field, and a list of Netflix Games titles will pop up. They’re marked with a small Netflix “N” in the corner of the thumbnail. You can also search for Netflix’s games directly; searching for Oxenfree II in app stores will turn up the game (after several sponsored results that are not Oxenfree II).
However you choose to find it, or play it, Oxenfree II is a spooky, fun, emotionally complicated story of an island haunted by a mysterious phenomenon, and characters haunted by their pasts and their choices. If you never knew Netflix offered video games, this is a fun reason to subscribe—and if you’re already a paying customer, it’s a great free perk.
This article was edited by Caitlin McGarry.
