Afterparty – PAX East Preview
Oxenfree was a huge hit for Night School Studio, releasing on nearly every platform imaginable since the game’s initial release in early 2016. It’s now early 2019 and Night School Games is back with their highly anticipated follow up, Afterparty. So how does Afterparty live up to the big shoes that their last game left to fill? Well, it’s pretty early and it’ll depend on how the story plays out, but at this point it appears as though they took the blueprint left behind by Oxenfree and expanded on it in nearly every way.
The story as we know it thus far centers around Milo and Lola, two recently deceased friends who are looking for a way to escape their fate and return to the land of the living.
In our demo we find ourselves in a bar celebrating our death day with all the rest of the population that met their fate at the same time. Like Oxenfree, you’ll walk around initiating conversations with people choosing which dialogue to offer as an answer to the questions and comments made by others in the bar. One thing noticeably different here is the length of time you must answer. The answers don’t disappear as quickly, if at all this time around, enabling you to really think through your response before presenting it.
There is quite a bit more gameplay this time around as well. Stopping to talk with a demon will set up an interesting take on the beer pong that they played on earth. This time the cups are filled with the blood of the innocent, upping the ante quite a bit. You’ll have to shoot the balls into the cups to score. It’s little details like this that makes Afterparty seem like a great successor.
The graphics are much more detailed than their last game which helps make Afterparty stand apart. It looks incredibly beautiful and the character’s faces are much more alive this time around with much more depth. They even seem to feel more relatable this time around.
Afterparty is an exciting opportunity for even more people to find out just how great Night School Studio truly is and seems to be on pace to continue to be.
