Afterparty is the second console game from Night School Studio, makers of the excellent Oxenfree [GN score 9 out of 10]. It looks so good. This teaser shows lifetime pals, Milo and Lola, freshly deceased, getting flown down to hell on the wings of some minion of Satan. You're looking at an eternity of eternal damnation—unless...
...Unless you can drink the Devil under the table. That somehow gets you out of your doomed status.
So Afterparty has got the fantastic, almost Gorillaz-like illustrations of Oxenfree, which also carries forward the naturalistic dialogue choices that slide smoothly into the point-and-click adventure gameplay, coupled with great young-adult-fiction voice acting. In the video, you're taking the newly dead duo into a drinking establishment called the Schoolyard Strangler. The place is hopping with lots of other demons and humans. You order from a menu of drinks with names like Bloody Stool, Famous Last Words, and Dead Orphan. Satan, the Lord of the Flies, is featured on a poster advertising "the eight hundred millionth hellcoming dance," with a wry grin on his face and a drink in his hands. This must be a hint at the final boss stage where you'll hopefully have the alcohol tolerance to finagle your way out of your endless sentence in the underworld.
Oh, and bystander demons—who refer to you as a "skin puppet"—will be live tweeting your janky moves on the dance floor at the Inferno House, as you make your way through crowds of other hell dwellers grabbing your butt, while you deliberate from one bad idea to the next, trying not to throw up. At least you still get reception in the vast wasteland below, with Milo and Lola texting each other with messages ripe for Damn You Auto Correct!
The Afterparty begins in 2019. Nothing is baked yet, but hopefully, like Oxenfree, it'll appear on any and all platforms, from your PlayStation to your Pixel phone.
