After Party

Explore the mean streets of Hell as two dead best friends

- Kimberley Ballard

It’s been three years since Night School Studio released its bewitching coming of-age debut Oxenfree. Its next game, Afterparty, looks even stranger and more surreal. We meet Lola and Milo, two recently deceased best friends who wind up in Hell. Their only chance of escape? Beating the Devil and his horde of demons in a drinking contest.

Yes, you read that right. Satan has a taste for booze, and demons like to party just as much as teenagers do. It sounds like Disneyland for burnouts, where lurid cocktails replace rainbows and monsters prowl the streets instead of cute animals. Fitting considering the inspiration that had been brewing for a number of months before development began.

“The core concept came from a series of conversations that Adam [Afterparty and Oxenfree writer] and I had while walking around a massive cemetery across the street from our office,” says Sean Krankel, co-founder of Night School Studio. “It’s where Michael Jackson, Walt Disney, Carrie Fisher, and Lucille Ball are buried, and we used to wander around the grounds to get our creative gears going. Weird, I know.”