Indie Game Spotlight: Afterparty

Indie Game Spotlight: Afterparty

This week’s Indie Game Spotlight is sure to be one hell of a time. Afterparty, created by @nightschoolstudio, has you play as two recently deceased friends, Milo and Lola, who find themselves staring down an eternity in Hell. The only way out? If you can manage to outdrink Satan, he’ll grant you re-entry to Earth. Get ready to party your way out of Hell.

Sean Krankel, Studio Director, and Adam Hines, Creative Director and Writer, were kind enough to chat with us about just what went into making this game. Read on below.

What inspired the story and characters in Afterparty?

Sean: Adam and I had been talking about making a game that takes place in a bar for about a year.

I love hanging in the watering holes in games, even if they usually don’t have any meaningful repercussions. It’s fun to order booze in Red Dead or hang in a tavern in Skyrim, but what if there was a game about just going on a crazy bender with your best friends?

That led us to the idea of hanging out with some really tough, intimidating characters, and pretty quickly we realized Satan would be the scariest opponent. Adam dove headlong into developing Night School’s version of the nine circles of Hell, a huge cast of underworld dwellers, and our own explorable version of the River Styx.

What was the most difficult issue with creating the game?

Sean: The whole thing. We’re a pretty small team, so we need to stay scrappy, meaning every element of the game is created by only a few people.  I mean, we definitely were able to build on the elements of our last game that proved successful, primarily the dialogue system where you can explore and talk freely. But beyond that, this game is a huge leap forward for us in terms of scope and ambition.  We have a massive cast of characters, 3D environments, a modular story that players can tackle in their own order, a bunch of activities like beer pong and karaoke… t’s a much larger endeavor than Oxenfree, which makes it all the more complicated and risky.

What games/movies/books were most influential to your work?

Sean: Afterparty is intended to be a playable version of our favorite rollicking party movies, so think Edgar Wright’s work, or Superbad. It’s all drenched in a macabre, whimsical look at death and the afterlife, so Tim Burton and Edward Gorey’s works were always floating around in our brains. Finally, we wanted it to feel like a bustling multicultural metropolis, so each island in the game is inspired by various corners of the world.

Are there any moments in the game inspired by a true story or an event in your life?

Adam: Every moment of drunken debauchery that happens in the game is based on moments that I’m sure all of us have experienced at one point or another, just pitched to impossibly absurd heights. But there wasn’t anything specific that we took from something that happened to us, no.

Who would win an arm wrestling match: Milo or Lola?

Sean: Lola.

It’s canon: Lola is strong as hell. Have a Q of your own for @nightschoolstudio? Ask ‘em now! The whole crew will be answering questions on Friday, January 18th at 1 p.m. ET // 10 a.m. PST for a very special Answer Time. 

Afterparty is set for a 2019 release and can be wishlisted on Steam here.