Publisher(s): Night School Studio (ID@Xbox title)
Platform(s): Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Switch, PC
Release Date: 2019
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Afterparty is one of those games that you just have to ‘roll with’ as you play. You play as Milo and Lola, two recent college graduates who die a horrible death and find themselves in Hell. Hell in Afterparty is not the place that Dante described in his Divine Comedy, however. Instead, it is a Shibuya-esque place where the demons and humans get together to drink and hang out after a busy day of the demons torturing the humans (think of torturing and being tortured as jobs with banker’s hours). Milo and Lola don’t want to be tortured, however, and they discover that they can escape back out of Hell if they can outdrink Satan. The Afterparty demo I played at GDC takes place about forty-five minutes into this seven hour game.
Afterparty is a dialogue-driven, puzzle-and-skill-mechanics driven game. The dialogue choices that Lola and Milo make in this gorgeous neon-soaked world will change how other demons and people in Hell react with them and will even change the storyline itself. And if that weren’t enough, since Afterparty -is- a game about out-drinking Satan after all, they can even drink certain alcoholic drinks (I drank something called a ‘Bloody Stool’ during my demo) that will give them abilities and change dialogue options, often for the more hilarious. Afterparty, if it is anything like the demo, is an extremely, extremely funny and well written game. The characters made me laugh repeatedly with the sharp humor and dialogue that flies back and forth between all of them, and yet it also served to stake out quite a bit of personality for Milo and Lola and everyone else in Hell. I wanted to go back through the Afterparty demo more than once, even though I sadly didn’t have time, in order to see what other dialogue options that I could activate with other drink options.
As for the puzzle-and-skill mechanics in Afterparty, I was only able to see a little of them both in my demo. In order to get upstairs at this bar, I ended up playing beer pong with another demon, and I found that -even while pounding alcohol- it was fairly basic physics to aim the ball to arc into the cup. I had to figure out who to talk to and where in order to trigger the proper sequence in order to move the storyline forward. The gameplay in Afterparty is pretty basic otherwise: walk around, press a button to interact with people and doors, and select dialogue options. All of this works rather well, thankfully.
The final thing that I want to write about is the music. All throughout my time with Afterparty, the soundtrack of beats and bass composed and played by scntfc was fantastic to listen to and it really set the tone of Afterparty‘s version of Hell as a place to go hangout at and drink. You know, when not being tortured. I’ve actually started to listen to scntfc’s music (you really should check it out here on Bandcamp) even after GDC as a result of my brief time with the game. Music frequently can make or break a game, and in this case, it really ties the dialogue and graphics and story in Afterparty together in a way to build the ultimate night of partying up as something worth exploring.
Afterparty is an ID@Xbox title that is due to be released in 2019, and I honestly can’t wait to make a mixed drink and sit down to play it on my Xbox One when it does…and try out the inevitable fan recipes for real-life drinks that are inspired by those in the game.
Are you excited to try out Afterparty? What kind of drinks do you hope will make it into the game?
Let us know in the comments below!
