Afterparty is a branching narrative
drinking game set in Hell. Our
protagonists are Lola and Milo, two
recently deceased college graduates
and lifelong best friends. With no
memory of how they got there, Lola
and Milo seek to
escape Hell, but the
only way home is to
out-drink Satan
himself. Hell is a social
battleground, one that
they are ill-suited to
deal with, sober.
Fundamentally it’s
simple to play. You
move left and right along a 2.5D
plane and interact with points of
interest. Most of your time will be
spent talking and partying with the
denizens of hell, with the occasional
game of beer pong or a dance-off to
mix things up. The real meat of
Afterparty is found in its multiple-
choice conversation system.
As others speak two possible
responses appear above Lola or
Milo’s head. The responses
themselves are either positive or
negative, agree or disagree. The thirdoption, which changes depending on
what drink you’re sipping, is usually
the most entertaining.
Hell is full of life. The pub talk is
entertaining: people of all shapes and
sizes walk the streets, the
conversations flow
smoothly, and there’s a
bar to suit every taste.
As you drink your
way home and through
their interactions with
others, you quickly
grow to understand
Lola and Milo, as well
as the dynamics of
their relationship. For a game
predominantly about drinking, as I
played I grew concerned that
Afterparty was over-glorifying it all.
Portraying alcohol as this perfect and
wonderful thing, laughing off all of
the repercussions and acting like the
answer to every situation is a shot of
absinthe. But my concerns were
quickly addressed.
It is the definitive night out
simulator. You try new drinks, travel
between bars, and connect with
incredible people. Then, after a fewmore drinks, things escalate, and you
start to do progressively stupider
things. The repercussions aren’t a
real concern, it’s a bit of fun, you’ll be
leaving soon anyway. You’ll probably
never see any of these people again.
But inevitably the revelries draw
to an end. The bars empty, the clubs
begin to close, and a guy urinates on
the side of a building, one hand
against the wall to hold himself
upright. The party is long over, and
now only a desperate few remain. As
a new day arrive,s they are forced to
face reality and their problems. It gets
surprisingly sobering.BUGFAST TONIC WINE
I didn’t encounter any major bugs,
but I noticed stuttering whenever a
character started a new animation,
Satan’s cape once tried to fly off of his
shoulders and, every time the taxi
dropped me off, it did a 90 degrees
wheelie in the river of lava. These
issues weren’t huge, but seeing such a
beautiful, well-animated game
regularly trip up is disappointing.
When time permits, I look
forward to returning for my after-
Afterparty to see what other routes
Lola and Milo could have taken, what
other tortured souls they may have
met. There are clearly multiple
different solutions I could have
explored and lessons to be learnt, but
due perhaps to how doggedly I
played, the lessons didn’t seem to
stick for the main cast.
I had high expectations for
Afterparty. I was expecting a comedy
title, but the very real relationship
between Lola and Milo, the humour
that had me chuckling and the
audacity from Night School Studio to
go where they did, at the risk of their
player’s discomfort, made Afterparty
more than I thought it could be.NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
A branching narrative
adventure set in Hell
EXPECT TO PAY
$20
DEVELOPER
Night School Studio
PUBLISHER
Night School Studio
REVIEWED ON
GTX 1070, i7-8700,
16GB RAM, SSD
MULTIPLAYER
None
LINK
Link:
nightschoolstudio.
com/afterparty80
Afterparty has top-
notch writing and
superb voice acting,
coupled with a visually
vibrant hellscape.VERDICTThe real meat is
found in its
multiple-choice
conversation
systemH
ell is where everything you order is delivered by UPS. Hell
is where you have to read every single subtweet that might
be about you. Hell is a queue that never ends. Hell is only
two days off work a year. Hell is being kicked out of a bar
because you have to fill out paperwork. Hell is where you
condemn a terminally ill med student to the ninth circle of hell in order to
get into a party. Oh, and there’s also an Arby’s. Welcome to Afterparty.GO TO HELL
Demons want to have fun and they want
to get wasted in AFTERPARTY. By Callum Agnew
DRINKS ON WHO?
Every beverage has its own effects
BLUEBEARD’S
LAST WIFE
If it drinks like a
pirate and speaks
like a pirate...WIT ENHANCER
It’s all just a bad
joke or a pun to you,
isn’t it?LITERALLY
ACID
It’s an alcopop.LOOK OUT
BEHIND YOU
The highballs
have eyeballs.REVIEW