I loved Oxenfree! I played through multiple times and got really into the lore. I say that because of this game, which I was excited to play and hated start to finish!

The quip-y interesting teen horror film archetypes you learn to care for are replaced with adults and demons that weirdly can only speak like quip-y teens?!

The charming low-fi graphics of Oxenfree glossed over by aesthetic and sound and the interesting colour palette is replaced by the low-rez models, clunky lazy animations, and dreary samely worlds of Afterparty.

This feels like I am coming down on it for not being Oxenfree, I am. But I think on its own, it is not worth playing. A game entirely around dialogue with annoying cloying dialogue. It feels like it wants to be a comedy game, but it is never funny. There are some interesting story beats, but they only come in the last 10 minutes of the game.

I wish if you did not want to select one of the 2 choices you could "select" nothing because it makes a really annoying space over the course of the game when you do not want to use one of the binary options.

This game is like that. A lot of little bad things or annoying things that all paint a picture of a game that feels bad moment to moment and its only throughline is being a negative experience.

I do love me a good depiction of the afterlife, especially one that mixes a healthy dose of real mythology with some entertaining departures from conventional depictions. Afterparty is an often irreverent and funny take on the afterlife that still leaves some room for serious reflection on life and death. Afterparty made me chuckle regularly (I'm still laughing about Chad from Kingston Ontario), but I also grew to earnestly like Milo and Lola, not to mention several of their demon companions. I found the ending both enjoyable and impactful, in sometimes cliche but also sometimes genuinely heartfelt ways.

Nightschool Studios borrows the dialogue mechanics from Oxenfree but tweaks them just enough to be interesting, adding a layer in which the drink you imbibe impacts the way the story is told. Dialogue choices don't have a large impact on the outcome of the game, but this didn't concern me. The overemphasis on branching dialogue trees in other games means Afterparty is free to tell a specifically designed and defined story, one in which your choices are intended to change the tenor of the conversation rather than the outcome of the game. I enjoyed the trajectory of the game, its outcomes and the way in which I could shape the framing of that story.

My one issue with the game is the poor performance. It didn't put a significant damper on my experience, but a smoother ride would have been welcome.

Like all the indie, story driven games I play, I came across this one on accident while scrolling the PS Store. The art style and premise had enough of my interest to justify the price, I mean partying through Hell gets my attention. The trailer wants to make sure you are aware this is by the team that made Oxenfree, which I’ve heard of, but not played.

So, the first thing you see in Afterparty is the art style. I’m definitely a fan of it, sort of a mix of neon and dark colors. That mixed with the lo-fi music makes this game feel like an Adult Swim ad break with a budget. The characters all have angular designs, especially the demons. I just really am a sucker for this simplistic art style. Most of the “gameplay mechanics” are just walking one direction and talking to someone. I do wish there was a run button, because you may have to walk between bars a lot and your characters don’t always trigger the running animation, instead just walking everywhere. The most advanced gameplay mechanic in Afterparty is the cocktail system, each bar in Hell has a list of cocktails that grant you different effects in conversation. The most common is “liquid courage” which just makes you a trash-talking, angry drunk. There’s ones that let you talk like a pirate or a 20s gangster or make you a hopeless romantic or a witty punster. And all the cocktails come with humorous little blurbs describing their recipe. As a guy who dabbles in mixing drinks it was fun to see all the drinks and trying to find one that I could replicate, but that’s hard to do when they had ingredients like witch’s teeth, battery acid, or the moxie of a dozen housecats.

Now, the story is what this game is all about. You play as Milo & Lola, two college students at graduation kegger. Unfortunately, they’ll never leave this party… alive. You end up in Hell without any knowledge as to how you died or what you did to deserve damnation. This version of Hell has all the fire and demonic imagery you’d expect, but the culture is more like an office job. The demons torture humans from 9-5, then both parties clock out and go drinking for the night. Luckily you show up at the end of the work day, so Milo & Lola don’t have to get tortured. You quickly learn, thanks to a demon cabby, that you can get out of Hell & back to Earth by outdrinking the Devil himself. So, Milo & Lola start off on a Hellish adventure that involves getting a ticket to Satan’s houseparty and partying with his demon brothers & sisters as well.

Throughout the game you are followed by a personal demon, an annoying character that is there to pry on our heroes insecurities. This is where we get some character development from Milo & Lola and their friendship dynamic. Milo is the stereotypical millennial dude who isn’t quite sure who he is yet, not helped by the fact he has an overbearing father. Lola was rasied with a bunch of catty stepsisters and both cares about saving the world and cares about nothing, or a stereotypical millennial chick. Not the most original characters, but there is some relatability to them. I never felt like I really got to know enough about them or their relationship though, it was kept very surface level. You never really find out what caused them to be sent to Hell, the rules seem to be that even minor offenses can get you a ticket down below, but we don’t know what exactly Milo & Lola did. How they die is a little ambigious too. Spoiler: They are told, unceremoniously, that they died in a car crash, but I’m unsure if that’s true or just a ruse.

The other story thread running through this game in the background is that Satan’s devil siblings aren’t too happy with how he’s running Hell. It seems like they are going to start a coup to overthrow him, but what actually happens is they stage an intervention for Satan in a plea to stop all his partying and actually run Hell. Again, it’s kinda interesting, but they never give it enough attention to be engaging. And the story all ends with Milo & Lola getting out of Hell and moving on with life, but there are of course multiple options on how the story could play out. I know it’s a bit cliche, but I wish there was an option to have Milo & Lola realize they like each other as more than friends, but this story is dedicated to exploring how friendships work.

One thing that may be to blame for the lack of story depth is this game is a comedy title. While there are plenty of comedies with deep stories, see Futurama, this game kind of uses it as a crutch to get out of a situations. Don’t get me wrong there were plenty of little jokes I laughed at, especially the ones on Hell’s version of Twitter and the cocktail reviews. Some of the dialogue is funny, but most seems to fall flat. It’s usually just the quick quips that got my laughs, like the “Devil Went Down to Georgia” reference I was hoping for. The other issue is this game takes so much time with world building & expositing trying to set up all the lore for their version of Hell that they don't leave enough time for the actual story.

All in all, this is a fun, little game that I enjoyed for all the wacky drinks & the occasional laugh, but as an indie story driven game, it doesn’t quite reach the caliber of something like a Firewatch in character development.