Afterparty is Night School Studios’ follow up to Oxenfree. In this quirky adventure game, players must escape Hell by out drinking Satan. Making it to the Prince of Darkness involves a lot of drinking at various sleazy pubs and participating in a variety of alcohol-fueled mini-games. I recently had the chance to check out a demo of Afterparty and found the game both hilarious and original.
Afterparty focuses on two college-age youngsters named Lola and Milo. Lola is cool and confident while Milo is dorky and shy. Having recently died, the two band together to leave Hell. They soon learn the only way to do that is to go through Satan, who throws raging parties every single night. It’s a relatively straightforward premise that leads to a whole ton of crazy and interesting interactions.
The demo began with Lola and Milo leaving the River Styx and disembarking in Hell. A friendly demon named Sam leads the pair down a neon light-drenched street full of drunken demons and newly-deceased humans. Along the way, Sam brings the pair up to speed with regard to the rules of Hell. After learning they have to outdrink Satan to escape, Lola and Milo enter a pub and begin their adventure.
The protagonists learn of a man with VIP access who knows someone who can help them get in good with Satan. To gain his favor, they need to engage the man in a game of beer pong. The consumption of alcohol is one of Afterparty’s main gameplay mechanics. Different drinks have different effects and can alter your mood. The drink I choose only made me really drunk. This affected my ability to play beer pong since it threw my aim off. Thankfully, I figured out how to compensate for my character’s inebriation and won.
Afterparty’s depiction of Hell isn’t what we’re used to. Night School Studios’ Adam Hines explains the inspiration behind the game’s world.
“Many different things [inspired Afterparty], said Hines. “Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Greek mythology were huge tent poles from the classical side of things, while Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey and the Hellraiser movies were big inspirations from pop culture. We went in thinking that everything you’d ever heard about Hell (and the afterlife) from every assorted religion and philosophy was ‘true’, and tried to combine and remix those rules and descriptions in ways we found interesting and hopefully entertaining. Also, gameplay-wise, we wanted it to feel like a giant pub crawl, where you take taxis to and from different boroughs and neighborhoods, getting different flavors at each stop you went to, and the River Styx was a great way to connect all those places.”
There’s an abundance of hilarious dialogue in Afterparty. This extends not only to selectable dialogue choices but even to random banter from background characters. Different choices lead to different outcomes. Since I was trying to get in good with the VIP member, I tried to keep things civil. However, when I had more alcohol in me, I let myself spit out a few curses. This had the desired effect since it wasn’t long before I was invited upstairs to where the real party was.
“Old-school adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island, Sam & Max: Hit the Road and the Space Quest series [inspired Afterparty],” said Hines. “All games that are heavily focused on comedy and breaking the fourth wall to make jokes directly with/at the player. Also Full Throttle, which tried to combine skill-based gameplay (the motorcycle rides) with more traditional point-and-click puzzle solving. Afterparty is much more about controlling the narrative and having the story react unexpectedly to your decisions than any of those games, and its humor is arguably much more acerbic, but I’d say you can draw a direct line from those titles’ lineage to it.”
Though it takes place in Hell, Afterparty has a very tongue-in-cheek tone. This keeps things light despite the fact your main characters are dead and are galavanting with demons and murderers in the infernal depths. Because of the simplistic art design, some of the humor threw me off as I didn’t expect such foul and disturbing language from the whimsical characters. Once it all clicked with me, I fell in love with the messed up humor.
“[It’s] a comedy, so Afterparty never takes itself too seriously,” said Hines. “Though we want the game to have a lot of heart and for you to feel invested in and care about the characters and what they’re going through, we also wanted to be clear throughout that this was never intended to be a serious interpretation of religious tenets or morality.”
Afterparty’s Hell abounds with bright neon colors. It is a far cry from the depictions of Hell we’ve seen over the past two millennia. It’s a rather inviting sort of place, especially if you’re into the nightlife.
“Ruel Pascual is our Art Director, and Claire Chen is our Lead Artist, and they did a fantastic job of guiding the art team to a really cool, different approach to what Hell and its denizens look like. We wanted something that looks cartoony, but still clearly for adults, and we were heavily inspired by British comic book art and the work of Jamie Hewlett and Brendan McCarthy. I’m particularly fond of where we landed with the demons, who look identifiably ‘demonic’ but not generically so, and appear as they could only exist in our version of Hell.”
My time with Afterparty was brief. This means I didn’t get a full sense of how dialogue affects the larger narrative. I also didn’t get to bump into Satan. From what I did play, I found it an enjoyable adventure game. I’m eager to see the other types of activities one can participate in and how far the game pushes the racy subject matter. I don’t want to speak too soon but I get the sense Night School Studios has another sleeper hit on its hands. We’ll find out more when Afterparty releases on October 29 for PC (Epic Game Store), PS4, and Xbox One.
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