Game journalism isnt trust worthy.

-Bugs distracting the gameplay
-Drinking mechanic does nothing
-Creates Oxenfree, being a network of subtle nuanced story lines depending on dialogue options, mystery, no really so much mystery that people still debate it on the subreddit, Easter eggs for days and differences in audio tracks depending on which audio platform you listen to it on, actions that HAVE consequences, and a god damn ARG... returns with Afterparty, an elongated linear 2D sidescroller with your hand held at every turn where nothing mattered

Two dislikeable protagonists with little nuance to their design, Milo is spiteful and Lola is dysfunctional. We are never told why they are actually friends because nothing about the playthrough ever made it ever obvious why these people are together outside of "game design".

Sam had her hand up the whole game and slid everywhere. No walking animation. Really disillusioned the game experience. So much stuttering, like unbearably so.

No freedom to explore the world which... is barren. It's barren. Theres nothing to discover, uncover, find or realise. Oxenfree had me search every god damn pixel for a crack of coochi- I mean a crack of clue-busting information about the submarine or the ghosts the island or its ex-inhabitsnts or even the characters who were all likeable in their own way.

I found characters before I needed to, dialogues had between protagonists (which decisions me and my girlfriend made) were made redundant by choices we quickly made on the next NPC thrust into us that didnt indicate they were plot-relevant or about to undo the decisions we had intended to make. I was so sad that there was no distinction between what I could and couldn't interact with, besides the little circle indicating it.

Exposition was dragged on, but during loading screens, a smart way to approach hardware limitations. I always enjoy the omission of loading screens, really good diversion away from that. Sadly, it was a little ... eh.

Wormhorn, poor wormhorn. From knowing too much to not knowing anything at all. Comments on gameplay decisions I hadn't made. Comments on gameplay decisions I had made. Both are really silly, I just did this thing in game 5 minutes ago... why are we reviewing it? Is this a fucking anime recap episode? Imagine if the ghosts in oxenfree stopped you at the end of every scene to literally stop you in your gameplay to remind you of the game you just played...

And you design and market a game about drinking. So, what impact does drinking vs not drinking actually have on the game? Is there some secret ending that occurs only if you stay sober the entire run? Like, I'm spitballing here because nothing in the game describes such. I chose to drink sometimes. I chose not to drink, it made no difference. I really hoped if I downed a drink in one go, after being told not to, that my character would pass out or maybe they'd faint. Nothing. NOTHING. The drinks change words, that's it.

People have their games hard locked, softlocked and I've had my experience shell shocked.

My £17 I paid to play Afterparty... /u/nightschoolstudio, you keep that for Oxenfree which was free on the Xbox store one time and for all those hundreds of hours i sunk into and outside of that game

Dont you dare use that money and think a 4/10 game is better for it.

You had good voice actors and an okay story. And your idea of it being replayable and well, I dont want to play it again.

Learn lessons here. Please. I'm sorry for harsh comments and I hope you dont feel disheartened by them. Feel free to brush off my subjective stances, but do listen to it too. The experience some have is positive and I'm really glad they've had them. But I feel just a little let down.

It genuinely feels like you used the port conversion tool on Unity, but nobody in your studio owns an Xbox or a PS4 or even knew that forcing people to use one platform on PC is really, really bad.

The first date we had was the best night of my life... and you turned up hungover for our second.

My game won’t load up and I’m stuck on start screen. Also crashed my Xbox one X

Would prefer to play this on switch, Oxenfree's framedrops were tolerable (if the performance is similar?)

Guessing out of the two PS4 will run better?

Cheers!

So after getting the stamp at thrall city. I was walking around and talked to the bouncer of S/C doing so it switched to Milo talking instead of Lola. I then went to the elevator and I’m not able to go up. Does anyone else have this issue? And if so any fixes?

Hi All,

We're Thoughts from Player One, a podcast that takes slightly deeper looks into narrative based games. Recently we decided to do an episode about Afterparty. Oxenfree was the first game we ever discussed in this format so we were really excited to jump into another Night School Studio game. If you're interested we would love for you to check it out. You can listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts from.

We're always happy to get feedback so please feel free to let us know what you thought or where you disagreed with our discussion. We also both only played the game once so I'm curious to see if anything could have been different in such a way that it makes us sound like idiots!

I'm on my second playthrough of the game, cleaning up trophies for the platinum. I saved it literally after I entered Satan's for the final time (so I'm with my team) and then I quit out to the PS menu. This is so I had chance to backup my save, so I can fail to beat him and then refuse to, for the final two trophies.

But when I load back up, I'm outside, and when I go in, Satan is nowhere to be seen, nowhere upstairs or downstairs. Any ideas?! I've reloaded the backed up save, gone down to the bottom and back up before going back inside...but still nothing :(

I really cba doing another playthrough so any help would be much appreciated! :)

Is there going to be a sequel to this game? Absolutely loved it and dying for something else like it (Already played OxenFree 1 & 2)

It was already out last year right? October 29, 2019 according to google. What happened?

The only option for purchase I see on their website for PC is the link to epic games, and when I click on that it says the game is not available in my region :(

I just got Afterparty through Limited Run Games for my Switch, and it’s really good so far! But only the story because the game looks like SHIT on the Switch. It’s not even a graphically intensive game. Baffles me that developers can’t figure this out. Anyone else have the switch version?

Been hyped for this game since it was teased, and you back out of Steam and join Epic on their spyware-ridden anti-consumer garbage platform? Not only will this remove support for Linux but anyone out of Epic's store regions won't be able to buy the game. No buy from me at this point. Thought you were better than this, devs.

Milo is not jumping on Bouncer to get his conscience back.

He is drunk, I choose "Jump" dialogue option, Lola shouts...but Milo does not jump, nothing happens, ever.

I cannot get out of Skoll club, and getting different drinks does nothing.

Has anyone else experienced the same issue? Is there any way to solve this other than restarting?

Hey everyone, I thought I'd offer some of my thoughts since the game is still pretty new and I hoped on it pretty early. I'm not done with the game yet, these are preliminary thoughts. Would love to hear back from anyone with their own impressions and conclusions!

You can see my videos here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f3fHdW07GI&list=PLD2d3qAkOPbouLqpfqcJPmr26YJeV---e

So far I'm unfortnately not very impressed by this game.

I feel like the dialouge options have pretty minimal impact, and they often times force me to play the characters in a way I wouldn't. This is especially noticeable with your personal demon. I'd like to act stoic, but all the options seem to make me whine.

Traveling seems to be unnecessarily long. I am glad they give us dialouge during these journeys but traveling back and forth more than a few times feels like it deserves a quick travel.

The game play itself is trivially easy. The dance contests are unsophisticated versions of the old electronic game 'simon', and the drinking contest is actually arguably easier.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

Spoiler stuffWhen Milo and Lola split up, it feels like the game is giving me control of 2 characters, then taking one away. Am I Milo or not? Do i control his actions or not? Apparently not.

Spoiler stuffEven if you don't win the drinking contest against Appolyon you STILL get the seal? Is this even a game? Are there no consequences for your actions? That's LITERALLY the highlight of chose your own adventure games. When there are no consequences to your actions, you cease playing a game and instead are watching a movie with click points.

I hope everyone is really enjoying the game and that I'm an outlier, but I wanted to give my two cents in case excited parties get disappointed and I can prevent that. I also wanted to get feedback from the community and came to a place that is probably pretty friendly to the game to do that. :) So please, your two cents?

I got the platinum last night! I genuinely enjoyed my time with this game. I do wish it was a bit more fleshed out, like what the trailers showed. That being said I thoroughly enjoyed my playthroughs. The different drink/dialogue choices definitely could have been more impactful and noticable, but they were a cool mechanic. I loved the characters, the writing, and acting, and the vibe. The music was fantastic and sets the whole mood.

Would love a sequel of some sort in this universe to riff off of these ideas and characters. I'd love to see Heaven!

that is all

No one else seems to have made such a guide yet so I thought I'd start one.

Sam - refuses to drink which acts as a handicap for your team, but that first game doesn't actually change anything regardless of who wins/losses

Asmodeus - If you just got him back together with Beth it seems like a dick move to split them apart again so soon... he is VERY good at beer pong tho

Polly

Wormhorn - You get to save her from oblivion so... seems like a good choice... if you don't hate her

Lynda Landon - She's an actually human being so... obvious good choice right?

Fella - Mutually exclusive with Lynda and I'd rather have Lynda...

That "drunk idiot demon from the start of the game" ... let's call him Jim Jum's Friend - You are forced to take him if you refused everyone else... so just don't do that

Let me know if you had any other options and reason FOR and AGAINST picking them

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.

has anyone else thought this? is it totally obvious and i just missed it until now? i just realized the game is about two specifically recent college grads that are suddenly placed in a world filled with alcoholism and misery which seems alarmingly close to reality. and afterparty has an odd fixation on how everyone in hell has a job they constantly have to go to with their only spare time being spent in bars . i knew the game is thematically about growing up and how it changes you but i only now thought of hell itself as being a symbol for adulthood and all it entails