Afterparty is a Night School Studio adventure game who created Oxenfree a few years back. The game is a beautiful concoction of hilarity, having weight in your choices, and heart.
The premise is you play as two friends who have been inseparable since preschool, Milo and Lola, who both recently graduated from college. They both are sent to Hell for an unknown reason. Their goal is to get out of Hell as any person would want. However, in Afterparty, to do this task you must outdrink and out-party the man himself, Satan.
The gameplay is walking around different areas of Hell to accomplish this goal of yours and choosing different dialogue choices of each of the characters you control at different times. Choices can come through a few different avenues. Like, alcohol. As you drink different concoctions made in Hell, you gain a different charisma each drink you have. My personal favorite was the “Literally Acid” where you have the option to talk like a hippie. Different drinks have different descriptions that are all hilarious. For “Literally Acid” the drink is described as just acid, that is all.
Afterparty exudes personality and humor in all the characters you meet, the drinks you get at the local Hell bars, and the environments. I had a few lines of Satan’s make me crack up. Each time you walk through an environment of Hell, you might run into a conversation that sounds too good not to hear. All these conversations are all giving you context into the lives of the people in Hell whether it be through bad choices, their friendships, or through other various things.
Another way to see what is happening around Hell is the social media app of the place called Bicker. This feature is a fun way to pause in-between some stuff and just enjoy reading people’s messages to their followers in Hell. They also commentate on your adventures if you are in that specific area, so that is always an enjoyable treat to look at and see them being happy, annoyed, or any emotion while on your journey throughout the game.
The voice actors truly did a great job of encapsulating each of their characters in humor, heart, hardship, and through the journey throughout Hell in general.
The environments beautifully encapsulate the feel of Hell. it is dreary, it has a history, it is a bleak place. However, the overall places are all colorful enough to represent Hell in a way that is a personality along with Afterparty’s characters themselves. Each time you walk through an environment, you might
I played this game on a launch PS4 and it showed sometimes. The game crashed once on me towards the end, but throughout the game, it was choppy at moments that could have been more impactful if it wasn’t. I heard a few characters’ lines immediately after when they should have a pause in between a few times, or their lines would be heard too far in between which would create an awkward waiting period.
The game has so much replay value to find out what route this choice could have taken as most adventure games can, but all routes seem so interesting that you want to find out what happens when you do this one choice. The choices have an impact to them which is not always the case. To add to the replay value, the game is only about five to seven hours long.
Milo and Lola do feel like best friends for two decades who are hoping to enter adulthood and realize the challenge that could bring to their relationship. All these characters are believable and what every one of them goes through and that speaks volumes for the writing of Afterparty so, so much.
Overall, Afterparty is one of my favorite games of the year so far. The environments are truly breathtaking, the choices you make are morally challenging, and the gameplay is on par with Night School Studio’s previous game, Oxenfree and creating an atmosphere.
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