Game #1102: Afterparty

  There's a party in hell tonight.

 Right after Oxenfree there was only one way left go, downward to hell, where Afterparty takes place. This is another walking simulator with tons of dialogue, so if you played Oxenfree you know what to expect: Tons of walking and tons of talking.

 The game pits you as the duo of Milo and Lola, who recently died and got sent to hell. At first how and why they are in hell is kind of a big deal, and it made for an intriguing mystery, but the plot never really does anything with either, they just kinda died and why they are in hell is explained in a few throwaway lines that you'll probably miss. The big focus of the narrative is on Milo and Lola getting another shot at life, by making it to Satan's party and outdrinking him. Yeah, the whole game takes place in hell, but the script is very humorous in nature. There's also an aesop about drinking in excess hidden somewhere in the script, but I don't think they quite pulled it off, with the character that seems to be suffering the most from alcoholism not showing quite the terrible consequences of binge drinking you'd expect, and considering you spent a lot of time in hell... they could've shown much better the effects of their drinking on the world and the characters related to them, but nope, they forgot about showing and not telling, so they just tell you about it. One time. Near the end of the game. And it's only after they tell you about it that he starts showing some of the effects of drinking too much. I don't know, I feel like they could've done a much better job with the narrative. On the other hand, I think they did a good job with the demons, they look creepy and otherworldly enough, and they seem to have no gender, some may talk with feminine voices and have masculine pronouns or viceversa, which made them and interesting bunch.

 Further aiding in destroying their 'drinking in excess is bad' aesop, most important character interactions require you to pick a drink. You don't need to drink it, but every drink has a different effect on your characters which translates into unlocking a different, third dialogue choice on some conversations. Most of these are just for flavor, as far as I could tell. That said, there are quite a few sections in which you two different alternatives in how to proceed, sometimes these choices can lock you out of meeting a few characters.

 There are a very sparse few minigames here and then to spruce up things, but most of these come out of the blue with no explanation, but after a while of not doing anything, if you don't realize you are supposed to do something, a phantom joystick will appear next to your character highlighting the buttons you are supposed to use. To do what? Press them and find out. Speaking of these, there's an optional Simon says-styled dance off in which a character OBSCURED the button inputs I was supposed to press! It only happened once and I couldn't find other people complaining about it online. Thankfully, you can retry it as many times as you need.

 Something I didn't really appreciate was some of the pacing. Four or five times you have to climb to Satan's party only to be told "But now you need to do X", so you have to climb down his tower and move somewhere else. It gets a bit annoying after the second time. If getting to Satan's house was just a matter of moving to the right it'd be a bit better, but you have to go to the right edge of the screen, interact with an elevator, hopefully you pick the shortcut, then watch an animation in which you are flown to the top, now move to the right again. Interact with the door, if you get in, which won't happen the first time since you'll be sent back to get an entrance ticket, now you have to move to the right again and talk to someone, probably Satan, be told to do something. Now you have to go back all the way to the left, exit his house, left again, talk to the elevator, watch the animation again, move to the left again.... yeah, having to do this more than twice felt like somebody was taking the piss out of the player.

 On the gameplay side of things, sans the loading screen when loading your save file, the game either masks most loading screens with dialogue or the loading screens themselves are much shorter than the ones in Oxenfree. On the other hand, maybe it's because it's loading stuff, maybe not, but the game is full of stuttering all the time, which is a bit ridiculous considering how rudimentary the game looks and few particle effects there are. There's no reason as to why such a simple game should run so poorly.

 I feel like a game like Afterparty has no business running this poorly on the system, but it was passable. I wish I could say that I cared more about Milo and Lola than I did.... but I really didn't, and, once again, I feel like the script had potential but it was a bit forgettable and didn't make the most out of its premise. It's not too bad, but there are definitely better walking simulators out there. At least this one is Halloween appropriate.

 5.0