under the table. Somehow, we suspect
the Prince Of Darkness won’t prove to
be a lightweight.Devil’s advocate
Booze is pivotal, not just to
Afterparty’s story but also the way
it plays. “Drinking is actually kind of
a role-playing mechanic,” explains
Night School studio head Sean
Krankel. “If you go into a bar, they’ll
have anywhere between four and six
different drinks. And depending on
what drink you order, that will give you
totally new dialogue options.”
As in real life, drinking can turn
you into a flirt, or make you talk like
a pirate, or cause you to vomit up
your conscience and behave in ways
you’d normally shudder to think about.
Occasionally picking the right cocktail
will help solve a puzzle, but for the
most part it’s just a way of letting
players express themselves and
access optional corners of the story.
Playing the game, we’re reminded
of Tim Schafer’s back catalogue: the
strange afterlife of Grim Fandango, the
visual style of Psychonauts, the grog-
swilling of Monkey Island. Like those
older titles, Afterparty is an adventure
game driven by two desires: to tell
you a story, and make you laugh. With
its first game, Night School proved it
can do the first of those. The latter,
however, is a fresh challenge.
“When we were making Oxenfree,
that game was probably 80 per cent
serious and heart, and 20 per cent
humour,” Krankel says. “Comedy is a
rarely-tackled genre in games, but
it’s super universal in other media –
so with this game we wanted to try
making an adventure comedy that
was more 50/50.”
Krankel names everything from Rick
And Morty to Bill & Ted, Edgar Wright
to Judd Apatow, as inspirations for
Afterparty. “The shorthand we use
internally is that it’s Superbad mixed
with Beetlejuice,” he adds – a comedy
in a creepy world, with a dark sense of
humour but real heart beneath it all.
It’s a heady mix of influences, many
of which are rarely referenced by game
developers. Of course, putting all
your favourite ingredients in a shaker
doesn’t always lead to delicious
cocktails, but we’re eager for Night
School to drag us to hell so we can
sample the results. QHell, as philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre- or anyone who’s had to attend a
house party sober – will tell you, is
other people. And that has never been
truer than in the version of the abyss
we visit in Afterparty, the new game
from Oxenfree developer Night School
Studio. Forget fire and brimstone, this
abyss is all air horns and red plastic
cups, and demons who’ve overdone it,
heaving luminescent fluids onto the
pavement. Basically, it’s what we’ve
always imagined Spring Break is like.
If that’s starting to sound a little
too hellish, know that Afterparty’s
underworld is also very pretty. It’s
drenched in neon, and though the
game is functionally 2D, it has a real
sense of depth, mostly thanks to the
out-of-focus demons who frequently
wander across the foreground. Those
demons have mask-like faces, with
a glow that escapes through every
hole, while hell’s human inhabitants
are designed in a way reminiscent of
Gorillaz artist Jamie Hewlett.
You play as two of these humans,
the just-graduated Lola and Milo, who
have unexpectedly found themselves
in hell. Really unexpectedly – they
haven’t even realised they’re dead. As
you might expect, they’re eager to get
out and eventually discover a loophole
in the rules of hell: find Satan at his
eternal house party, and drink him
Afterparty
An afterlife adventure game
that’s funny as hell
Alex Spencer
PUBLISHER NIGHT SCHOOL STUDIO
DEVELOPER NIGHT SCHOOL STUDIO
ETA 2019HELL’S
HEART
Sean Krankel wants to
make it clear that
Afterparty isn’t all
pitchforks and
cocktails. “It dips into
some of the themes
that Oxenfree had, in
the middle of this
booze-soaked
adventure,” he says.
Expect a story “about
the nature of
friendship, and a
relationship with
someone you’ve
known for most of
your life, how that can
be strained and what
trust means”.“The shorthand we use is
that it’s Superbad mixed
with Beetlejuice”
Afterparty’s story will last around six hours, but seeing everything will require multiple playthroughsMore Xbox news at gamesradar.com/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 033
PREVIEW