Afterparty (Xbox One)
Hell really seems to get the creative juices flowing, the ironic dark punishments of eternal torment constantly reimagined to make the place seem even more awful… but sometimes Hell is also turned into a place of black comedy. Afterparty takes Hell and turns it into a neon cityscape split across multiple islands, the demons and their dark deeds clocking out at the end of dishing out terrible tortures to get a drink and relax in the same way mortal men do back on Earth. The off the clock debauchery is what is given the main focus in Afterparty, so appropriately enough, the main goal of the game is to drink the devil himself under the table to earn your way back to life.
Much of Afterparty is spent showing off Night School Studio’s vision of a dimly lit urban world where sin is worn proudly on the sleeve, but it is perhaps a bit too indulgent with its constant comedic focus on reinterpreting Hell as something beyond a burning pit of suffering. Demons, human souls, and other denizens of the underworld are constantly and casually referring to the tortures and dark sides of the place without the game ever giving the degree of detail where it could outright disturb a player, much of it more like pure bureaucratic talk or so detached from what you actually see in the world that it feels like someone deliberately being ridiculous with how they’re describing Hell. Besides seeing things like some jovial souls hanging from nooses or learning that some nearby demons are cooking a body to eat, Hell is more an exaggerated seedy underbelly of a city than the most evil place ever imagined, but the problem with trying to constantly play off your preconceptions of Hell in humorous ways is that it is truly constant. From start to finish you’ll be hearing characters you meet casually explain how Hell is both demented and yet somewhat inviting, and while there are so many instances of it that will likely get some laughs, the joke formula grows stale. The city and the game as a whole have a very nice and cohesive visual style though, something only briefly punctured by visual glitches like incorrect character movements, the take on Hell mostly interesting in the end even though it is overeager to try and demonstrate both its adherence to typical depictions of the underworld and its drastic departures from them.
The plot of the game follows Lola and Milo as they suddenly find themselves in Hell, the two college friends immediately wanting to find a way back to the world of the living once they realize where they are. Quick to latch onto a well-known offer that Satan allows anyone to escape Hell if they can outdrink him, they ignore how rarely it has actually happened and plunge forward with their plan. Challenging Satan isn’t as simple as approaching him though, as not only do they need to get admitted to the devil’s ongoing and incredibly exclusive party, but they need to prove to him he’s worth their time by meeting with other notable demons of Hell and proving their worth to them. The plot actually begins to take on some unexpected turns as you continue down this path, mainly that Satan’s partying is certainly a problem for the people of Hell and he quickly becomes a character as important to the narrative as the protagonists rather than just an obstacle to overcome at the end.
Milo and Lola mostly navigate Hell through conversations, the player needing to pick dialogue choices when prompted to guide the tone and content of what they talk about with the denizens of the underworld. Players will swap between Milo and Lola as its appropriate to the story, and both of them are written in a fairly believable manner save for a mild overuse of stuttering and false starts. However, it can feel a bit like the two are quite detached from their predicament and perhaps too focused on delivering witty commentary or indulging in personal drama. Both are frequently referential in their humor, Lola preferring to deliver lines with a more sarcastic edge while Milo has greater emotional extremes, but the game sort of runs into a comedic issue where almost every line is trying to be clever or funny, hence how detached the protagonists end up feeling from the story. Both of the characters have enough depth and character history to be fleshed out, the game even assigning a “personal demon” to them that briefly pulls the adventure aside to better explore the two, but because the game doesn’t integrate their past all that often into the main narrative, they don’t really have the standout character moments that would make the plot feel like a cohesive whole.
Afterparty’s plot is still put together competently enough and has some humorous situations along the way despite some its rocky approaches to jokes and storytelling. Different parts of the game have you doing things like trying to sneak into a demon’s only club, assisting in a court case over whether a soul belongs in heaven or Hell, having your inhibitions ripped out and turned into a new character, and trying to hock the macabre snacks of a demoness running a food cart. The situational comedy is often strong enough to make up for the fatigue of rapid fire explanations of what Hell is like, and Afterparty probably should have kept its focus on those more, these highlights deserving more time than they get. Your dialogue options are definitely put into play the most here though, because not only can you pick between different activities in Hell at certain story points, but others have entirely different outcomes based on how you choose to act. The central narrative seems pretty dead set on reaching one of a few conclusions mostly tied only to the final moments of the game, but these choices along the way determine the personal interactions you have with the other members of the cast like your cabbie companion Sam and the personal demon whose job is literally to torment you however best she can manage.
Most situations in Afterparty will provide two dialogue choices that carry different tones. Characters can sometimes be friendly or aggressive, direct or cautious, and other clear dichotomies when things are being given room to diverge a little. However, if you want additional dialogue options, most locations in Hell seem to have an open bar, the player able to grab drinks that have different effects when imbibed. Besides some visual blurring, the drink choice will give you a third dialogue option if sipped during a chat, some of them focusing harder on things like being more fun, angry, or flirty as you speak, while others focus on deliberate ridiculousness like ones that make you talk like a pirate or a stereotypical Chicago mobster. Sadly, many of the silly ones seem to be brushed off by conversational partners and these options don’t trigger the most interesting of interactions, so while Afterparty’s intricate dialogue webs do make for chats that can take different paths, the drinks feel like an unimportant part of it.
Drinks also come up as part of the few moments of gameplay outside of picking what to say. You’ll be called upon to play a few drinking games at different points, beer pong involving you having to carefully adjust your trajectory and Jacob’s Ladder requiring you to carefully stack shot glasses in a tower. The drinking aspect will throw off your aim and precision a bit, but these are very simple minigames, as are other moments like a dancing section that can only really be failed if you’re trying to lose. Jacob’s Ladder can at least be a bit challenging because of the effect the booze has on your motor skills in-game, but none of them are very satisfying to play and it feels like your AI opponents are less equal competition and more failing to give you a chance. Afterparty certainly isn’t playing to its strengths with these, but they can be overlooked either because they’re simple enough to be easily completed or not too tied to successfully getting the story outcomes you desire.
THE VERDICT: Afterparty is incredibly eager to show off its neon-soaked reinterpretation of Hell to the point it talks a bit too much about it rather than organically exploring its humorous elements. There is definitely enough personality and wit to be found that the experience will have some enjoyable highlight moments and the barrage of joke telling isn’t so overwhelming it hurts the game, but more focus on the narrative would have done the game better than trying to deliver clever commentary at every opportunity. Afterparty won’t impress with its bare bones minigames, but the conversations are what is really meant to carry the experience and they hit just enough that a night spent with Afterparty is decent despite being colored by missed opportunities for something more meaningful or cohesive.
And so, I give Afterparty for Xbox One…
An OKAY rating. Afterparty banks on the subjectivity of its constant attempts at humor to carry it between the underexplored emotional story beats, but where it breaks away from other games that feature a heavy comedy focus is that Afterparty only has these dialogues to rely on. Something like Sam & Max has point and click puzzle solving to break up the line delivery while keeping a pretty clear focus on the plot, but Afterparty hinges on its dialogue choices as its core mechanic and thus a lot of it can start to get a bit tired after repeated exposure to the same setups and punchlines. The humor isn’t poorly written or trying too hard, but eventually it begins to blend together into a haze that makes it harder to appreciate a concept found in this party-focused version of Hell that could have played better if it had breathing room. Milo and Lola really needed to just speak practically more often, but they definitely could have been much better leads if all the work put into establishing them had a stronger payoff. Afterparty ends up a meandering mixture, plenty of absurd and witty moments being lost as they’re swirled into the same glass as the game’s attempts to keep the writing jovial throughout.
Afterparty may catch a certain type of player the perfect way if their sense of humor lines up right with the writing, but I can’t help but compare to this to another game that had a silly interpretation of Hell: Manual Samuel. Afterparty is much more clever and has a stronger core narrative than Manual Samuel, but despite repeating a few jokes, Manual Samuel has a much stronger sense of focus, each moment allowed to breathe and concepts moved on from after they’ve been explored a bit. That game’s Hell has different aspects highlighted when it appears, but Afterparty’s constant celebrating and dark comedy retread a lot of ideas while deemphasizing the new concepts that should have been given the limelight. It can still provide an interesting underworld to explore, but Afterparty stumbles a bit too much to make a night with it unforgettable.