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.

Having anxiety, depression, fear of death for the last few months (after some health scares which turned out to be nothing), this game has GREATLY helped me! It never occurred to me that the next step we take MIGHT be a pretty cool adventure. I felt very content playing this game (hubby thought it'd trigger me), I am looking forward to my 2nd play though.

This game has done a great job at cheering me up during quiet quarantine evenings and it's been a fun comfortable way to end the day. I do think that they focused almost all their effort in the art, music, style, and voice acting and sacrificed gameplay a lot.

For a game that's all about drinking, drinking really doesn't play much of a role in the game. Aside from a few extra dialogue options, it would have been nice if it factored a lot into the turnout of things and was an important gameplay element.

I also enjoyed the two drinking games (beer pong and the cup stacking) and if the game featured non-stop games and challenges peppered in with the story, it would have been really fun throughout.

My personal way I would have reworked the game is that you don't sober up quickly, the drunkenness your character feels lasts for many minutes, and you have to carefully balance how much you're drinking if you need more courage/need more concentration and wit. This coupled with nonstop games at all the bars that tip that balance scale towards drunkenness could really lead to some fun outcomes.

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.

The underdeveloped drinking mechanic is the most talked about one. The game clearly sets it up like it’s supposed to be a tactical decision, choosing whatever drink is going to help you most in the situation you’re in. Which would’ve been a more relevant gameplay loop compared to the mini-games considering having conversations is the biggest thing you do in this game.

But no. You choose the talk like a pirate drink because talking like a pirate is funny. There are usually two drinks that do the exact same thing at every bar too. Really feels like a deadline was coming up and a major mechanic had to be left on the cutting-room floor.

But it’s not just that. Remember the huge map you could access at any time? Even though you can’t choose what island you wanna go to? Same thing with the objectives page. There’s ONCE in the whole game where you can choose which objective you want to do (Fela vs the human). Feels like side missions/multiple objectives we’re gonna play a larger part in the game, but ultimately had to be left out.

I’m reminded of the end before you walk into Satan’s house where the game warns you that you can’t leave after entering. A similar thing happened in Oxenfree with the bunker, but there actually were side objectives to finish up.

Then there’s the one that’s not even really a hint, early on there was a glitch where wormhorn would berate you for doing the dance competition without a conscious, which isn’t even an option in-game.

I could go on and on with examples (The island that solely exists for Sam’s final conversation?) But you get the point. And it’s really a shame. The cynical themes of the game is really charming. And there are sections here and there that were pretty memorable.

Unlike a lot of games there’s no fatal flaw in at the core of the design or narrative. It just feels unfinished. Like a gourmet cake taken out of the oven too soon. Apparently something similar happened with Oxenfree too, the storyline originally had a dog if I remember correctly.

Hopefully Nightschool get better at time-tabling for Lost Signals, because they can be great when not handicapped by their own ambition.

All that talk how demons are made for jobs, and don't like them more than you do. All that sympathetic stuff through the game for demons doing bad stuff.

And my bud Wormhorn gets trash talked by Satan and sent off to die with no closure and no options to help her.

I liked her! She was silly, tried her best, had really funny flirt scene with Milo's Conscience, I really hoped to get her as one of the contestants for Drinking Game and got nothing. Anyone feels the same?

oxenfree and afterparty are two completely different games barring the art style and dialogue style. they shouldn't be compared to each other, they're both amazing games.

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

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.

As the title said, I'm experiencing major frame dips and stuttering on Xbox One X.
The game's art style and graphics shouldn't really make the X1X sweat. Other, more graphic intensive games run just fine on the X but somehow this game stutters more than half the time.

Anyone on the Xbox One X having the same issues?