Imagine this. You’re at a party with your longtime best friend listening to upbeat music while attempting to socialize with a group of people you just met. As you awkwardly stumble into a conversation, you begin to realize that your overly anxious demeanor doesn’t sit well with your other group.

You and your best friend grab a drink from the bartender and begin sipping it while you make another attempt to talk to the group, and to your surprise, you feel more confident in your social skills. You continue to enjoy the party until, moments later, you and your best friend awaken in hell with no recollection of how you got there.

Thus, Milo and Lola’s story begins.

Afterparty is the second game from developer Nightschool, the creators of Oxenfree. In Afterparty, you play as two characters, Milo and Lola, who find themselves in hell and embark on an elaborate quest to return to the land of the living. Milo and Lola quickly find out that the only way out of hell is to challenge Satan to a drinking game and out party him, which no one has ever been able to do.

Exploring the Bottoms of Hell

Hell is just one big party in Afterparty. Every backdrop is filled with bright fluorescent colors and neon lights. While exploring hell, you see both demons and humans walking around looking for a good time while scrolling through their social media profiles on an app called Blicker. All of this seems weird at first until you meet Satan for the first time. Satan is hellbent on having a good time and making sure everyone around him does as well. 

When you first run into him you can see that he is the life of the party. He towers over everyone else in the room and has a deep, booming voice. He has a few extra horns on his head and a nice fur coat decked out with skeleton heads on each shoulder. Satan quickly explains Milo and Lola that they must out-party him if they have any hope of returning home, but, in typical fashion, Satan will make things difficult for the two friends to achieve their goals.

Dialogue is King in Afterparty

While playing Afterparty, you will quickly come to realize that the dialogue between the characters (mainly Milo and Lola) is the highlight of the experience. As you explore the depths of hell, Milo and Lola will casually begin conversations about the task at hand, past experiences, or just how the two are feeling at the moment. Even when Milo and Lola aren’t speaking to each other, you are still entertained by the demons in surrounding areas holding their own conversations.

Each character in Afterparty has their own sarcastic persona that adds more variety to the experience. For instance, Milo is a pleaser. Just by his stance of rubbing his arm and holding his head down, you can visibly see that he is very shy and anxious. However, he’s still sarcastic and humorous but with a shy and anxious overtone.  

Occasionally you will be prompted to decide between two dialogue choices to drive the conversation forward. During these moments you will sometimes have a third dialogue option to choose from, and this is where the alcohol comes into play.

Alcohol = Liquid Courage

Alcohol adds an interesting dynamic to Afterparty. Before talking to certain characters, Milo and Lola have the opportunity to get a drink from the bartender. Each drink option has some ironic and hilarious name, with an even more ironic and hilarious effect on Milo and Lola. At one point I took a drink from the  Bartender called Literally Acid. When Milo drank it, he was the life of the club which was shown by his new jargon after consuming the drink. There are many different drinks with different effects that make for some hilarious conversations so be sure to try them all. Don’t worry though, you won’t have to guess what effects each drink will have as the drink effects will appear on the side of each drink before selecting it. 

Some drinks work better for certain situations. For instance, during a game of beer pong, I chose to take a drink that made Lola speak as if she were a fan at a sports game. Before my partner took his shot in beer pong, I took a drink from the cup yelled at him as I was cheering him on. Both times I did this he made the shot.

Mini-Games: Become the Life of the Party 

Like most parties, there are plenty of drinking games and dancing. During the moments where Milo and Lola have to out party a demon, they participate in a mini-game, where the player must complete various actions to beat their opponent. For instance, Milo and Lola participated in a dance-off against a demon named Asmodeus. The dance-off is a game of Simon says as Asmodeus dances, you have to press the buttons as they appear to mimic what Asmodeus does. Too many mistakes and you lose.

Your Very Own Personal Demon

In Afterparty, you will be assigned a personal demon named Wormhorn. Wormhorn is a charismatic but sadistic character that aims to make Milo and Lola second guess any and everything they do. Think of the personal demon as an all-knowing entity that uses anything from your past, present, and potential future to make you want to give up in life. 

Wormhorn uses her knowledge of Milo and Lola’s past to try to drive them apart from each other while maintaining an oddly chipper demeanor. The thing that I like about Wormhorn is that she makes YOU, as the player, second guess your decisions. At one point during Milo and Lola’s adventure, you have the option to either help a demon reunite with his wife or have a dance-off with him to get an item you need to progress in the game. I chose the latter as I thought it would be the most straightforward option. Upon finishing the objective, Wormhorn visits me and criticizes my decision of having a dance-off rather than choosing to help foster a loving relationship. This interaction actually made me feel unsure about my decision. 

In conclusion

Afterparty is a great game that will run you about 4 to 5 hours of gameplay. It’s filled with amazing characters and constant knee-slapping one-liners from all characters that will keep anyone entertained for the duration of their gameplay. 

The only hiccups that I found while playing are the occasional technical glitches that will make the frames drop like while traveling in a taxi or when prematurely starting a conversation before your other one was done. Also, I find that the lack of a waypoint can make things difficult at times. If you’re not paying attention to the dialogue or happen to miss out on some key information explaining where you are supposed to go to next, you may find yourself lost.

 Lastly, when playing drinking games, Afterparty lacks a tutorial. The controls are pretty straight-forward, but the developers still assume that you will already know the rules and mechanics for each game on your first try.

The Verdict: 8.5/10

In the end, I give Afterparty an 8.5 out of 10. Despite the technical glitches and the minor flaws with a few gameplay mechanics Afterparty still does what it aims to do very well. I highly recommend giving this game a try!

For more on Afterparty be sure to listen to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast app. 

Stay Gritty, Gamers!