Afterparty

 PC
User Score
6.8

Mixed or average reviews- based on 49 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 24 out of 49
  2. Mixed: 15 out of 49
  3. Negative: 10 out of 49

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  1. hello_world
    Oct 29, 2019
    6
    Afterparty's gameplay would be familiar to those who played Night School's previous outing "oxenfree". For the uninitiated, it is a narrative based adventure where dialogue options are the main point of interaction. There are a few mini games sprinkled out the adventure, but for the most part you will be walking to places and choosing what to say to NPCs.

    The new mechanic of    Afterparty's gameplay would be familiar to those who played Night School's previous outing "oxenfree". For the uninitiated, it is a narrative based adventure where dialogue options are the main point of interaction. There are a few mini games sprinkled out the adventure, but for the most part you will be walking to places and choosing what to say to NPCs.

    The new mechanic of Afterparty is that you can purchase different alcoholic drinks at certain locations, which will give you an extra dialogue option depending on what drink you chose. The effects can be increasing your character's confidence, making them flirty or making them speak like a pirate. These options are generally more fun options to choose, though they don't really feel like they are meaningful choices in terms of the narrative or character relationships.

    Narrative wise, the game aims for a more comedic approach to its script. While the premise is amusing, as is the aforementioned drinking mechanics, the comedy generally fell flat for me. The attempts at humour never had me laughing, though to its credit it never became grating either and did make the characters more enduring. It should be noted that humour is subjective and I find that I can be hard to please when it comes to comedy. The narrative does have its dramatic beats and they do flesh out the characters. However, the narrative doesn't feel as tightly written as Oxenfree. Simply put the ending of the game didn't have a impactful narrative payoff, as much of it relies on a twist that your characters don't have anything to do with.    … Expand
  2. Lindley
    Nov 11, 2019
    7
    I loved Oxenfree and was so excited for this game and wanted to love it. Unfortunately the story fell a bit flat for me. The pace of the story never seemed to get going, and I felt like I was still just getting into the story and the world when suddenly the game just finished. I didn't feel like there was get a good narrative payoff with the ending, I felt a bit robbed tbh.

    I love the    I loved Oxenfree and was so excited for this game and wanted to love it. Unfortunately the story fell a bit flat for me. The pace of the story never seemed to get going, and I felt like I was still just getting into the story and the world when suddenly the game just finished. I didn't feel like there was get a good narrative payoff with the ending, I felt a bit robbed tbh.

    I love the developers and I do think they write dialogue well - though at times with Afterparty it felt like they would just go on and on, not really talking about anything. I found I couldn't engage with it in the same way I did with Oxenfree. It was a real shame tbh.

    That said the world and the art is lovely. The characters are cool and interesting, but switching back and forth between Lola and Milo felt clunky and as a result I didn't feel like I could relate to either of them. I enjoyed the music, though found it didn't really go with the voice acting? I found myself constantly messing with the settings as I couldn't get a good VO to Music ratio, which broke the immersion for me and was a bit frustrating.

    There were also a few bugs here and there, such as crashes, and weird glitches.

    There seemed to be talk that this game was a much bigger project to Oxenfree, but I think this may have just been referencing the amount of voice actors and their art budget, as the story was about the same size, and didn't seem as ambitious. I didn't feel my choices really had much of an impact on the story or my relationships. The cool drinking/dialogue mechanic felt purely novelty as well and I think it's a shame they didn't push this further. It seemed pretty much just decorative. Which is a real shame. The mini games you have to complete as well could have been utilized better and I was expecting them to happen much more before the end of the game. The two mini games you have to do to beat Satan you only experience at one other moment in the entire story. With one of these mini games I was still unsure as to how exactly to play by the time I got to Satan as there's no real introduction to them before suddenly, bam, it's the end.

    Overall, the world was cool, but felt empty at the same time. It was filled with people that you couldn't talk to and the drinking mechanic only worked when you spoke to people in bars but I felt like I didn't actually get many opportunities to do this. I thought they could have done a lot more with the dialogue and drinking mechanic, creating unique experiences for each player based on who they chose to speak to and the repercussions of the dialogue choices the player chose. Nothing hugely story impacting, just maybe small little details to make the player feel like they're impacting the world.

    I would recommend this game, but I was also quite disappointed.    … Expand
  3. tonedef
    Mar 27, 2020
    7
    Not as good as Oxenfree. Still not bad over all - i enjoyed the dialogue and story.
  4. BulgarianCritic
    Feb 7, 2021
    5
    This was a pretty average , not that interesting and to be fair 60% pretty boring of an experience. There was very little charm to the characters and even if this is mostly a dialogue game , most of the dialogue came out to be either preachy or just plainly uninteresting. I didn't care about almost any of the characters and when it seemed that something interesting will happen they pullThis was a pretty average , not that interesting and to be fair 60% pretty boring of an experience. There was very little charm to the characters and even if this is mostly a dialogue game , most of the dialogue came out to be either preachy or just plainly uninteresting. I didn't care about almost any of the characters and when it seemed that something interesting will happen they pull the rug beneath your feet and its more boring exposition and dialogue. They could've also been more creative with their vision of hell since to be fair it looked like an incredibly boring chinese version of a tim burton movie. Overall I suggest buying this when its like 60% off and if you have a few hours to waste, but if theres anything else to play I suggest playing that and not this snooze fest.… Expand
  5. kezzyhko
    Oct 23, 2020
    7
    ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍
  6. vaurne
    Dec 25, 2020
    7
    For someone that loves this genre, and other dialogue-heavy type games, I was beyond excited for this release. I loved the main menu, off the bat, the artstyle and the sound design. The intro hyped me up even more, it shows you the true potential of the plot, while introducing you to great characters voiced excellently, as well as interesting yet simple game mechanics.

    As the game    For someone that loves this genre, and other dialogue-heavy type games, I was beyond excited for this release. I loved the main menu, off the bat, the artstyle and the sound design. The intro hyped me up even more, it shows you the true potential of the plot, while introducing you to great characters voiced excellently, as well as interesting yet simple game mechanics.

    As the game progresses, however, you start to realize it lacks a lot of depth and does a lot of things wrong. The atmosphere stops grabbing you, and the dialogue starts to become predictable and mistimed at some points. The world stops making sense and stops interesting you, lots of jokes simply aren't funny, and it resorts to a lot of cheap tricks to entertain you, that just aren't very entertaining.

    My main issue with the game is that the questline is extremely cheap and boring. Seriously comparable to WoW filler quests like "Go to the forest fetch three mushrooms so that Orc can cook up dinner" type stuff. The whole game really feels like it's trying to fill the gaps, to take up as much time as it can, trying to build up an experience it clearly fails to deliver.

    All the characters except the main ones stop making sense. The challenges are not really challenges, and the illusion of choice is very present in this game. The ending is awful and the most unsatisfactory, cliché thing you can imagine. The twists really are bad and the experiences you had are completely void of any meaning. I even had lines of dialogue - I mean full conversations - repeat at completely different times and quests you could just retry endlessly without a consequence for failure.

    The character design and voice acting of Milo and Lola really save the game. I pumped it up to a 7 because I really love this type of Oxenfree-like games, but ultimately, I was very disappointed.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
75

Generally favorable reviews - based on 24 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 16 out of 24
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 24
  3. Negative: 1 out of 24
  1. Game Over Online
    Dec 3, 2019
    70
    As I played Afterparty, I kept thinking that I should be liking it more than I was. A character- and story-driven game sounds like it should be right up my alley, and I can picture people enjoying the conversations and appreciating a vision of Hell where it’s being run by devils with just as many problems as everybody else. But I didn’t like the game, and I didn’t really like that there isn’t much game in the game (there aren’t any puzzles, and the drinking mini-games are so inconsequential it doesn’t even matter if you win them). So I’m giving Afterparty a lukewarm score. It’s definitely a game where your mileage may vary.
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  2. CD-Action
    Nov 25, 2019
    70
    The game is loaded with small glitches and inconsistencies but next to Night in the Woods it’s the one game I could point to and say ‘that’s how you should write engaging, living dialogue’. [13/2019, p.54]
  3. GameGrin
    Nov 18, 2019
    40
    Like a sober night in the town with drunken friends, it starts off amusing enough, but it wears out its welcome after a while becoming tiring and grating, and towards the end.
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