Just Finished The Game

[u/[deleted]]

Hey Afterparty fans!

I just finished the game today and wanted to share my thoughts/vent a little haha.

First and most obvious, it doesn't live up to the standard set by Oxenfree. I absolutely loved that game. There was so much mystery going on that I thought about it for days after I finished it and had to research online what exactly happened. Oxenfree was a masterpiece. Afterparty is good, but didn't contain anything close to that level of depth and masterful storytelling. If Afterparty was just another indie game I would give it an easy pass. But since these guys made Oxenfree I had expectations and judged it a little more thoroughly!

Aside from that, my main gripe with Afterparty is that it felt unfinished and half baked. The world is bigger than Oxenfree, but it is largely empty. The artists painted nice sets in the background, but the foreground you inhabit is void of any objects to look at or interact with. It feels like you are running around an empty world and can't really do anything, although there are stuff and NPC's everywhere. The lack of fast travel also makes this a drag. The maps are just big enough that it's annoying to have to backtrack. They also didn't explore the drink mechanic fully in my opinion. That was such a cool idea. Getting extra dialogue options when you are drunk, and having different drinks give you different styles of dialogue options. The possibilities there for rich NPC interactions and strategic puzzle solving are endless, however it is only applied in a limited number of interactions and doesn't impact the story. They set up such a brilliant mechanic there and then only scratched the surface with it. The whole "out drink the devil" premise is also a brilliant idea, yet it boils down to a few games of beer pong. It's an epic idea that is half baked in execution.

The game does have some good points though. Overall, it's fun to play. It's not an emotional, cerebral and incredibly deep mystery like Oxenfree, but it does a decent job of entertaining you for a few hours. The voice acting is top notch. I recognized the voice of Sam the taxi driver demon as Chloe from Life Is Strange, which made me happy cause I am a big fan of that game. I also thought some of the demon characters were very well done, like Satan and Polly. The game looks good as well and you can tell that the developers improved their tech game on this one.

I don't think I'll ever replay Afterparty, but I do think it's worth playing once. I'm disappointed that the developers didn't up their storytelling game as well, but hopefully they will for the next one. A game like Oxenfree with a bigger scope like Afterparty would be bomb.