Oxenfree developer Night School Studios first revealed Afterparty last year and from the start it was clear that this new game will be somewhat similar in game mechanics to Oxenfree but radically different in setting and tone. DualShockers recently had the chance to check the game out at GDC and asked Night School Studios Co-Founders Sean Krankel and Adam Hines what exactly will draw in fans of Oxenfree to Afterparty.
“In Oxenfree, I think it was fun for people to really dig deeper into the world that we had and the history. You could go pretty deep in terms of tuning into the tour guide stuff and being able to hear the history of the location and ghosts and things,” Adam Hines begun. “With Afterparty, there’s a lot of references to how hell is run and if you want to you can really go pretty deep into the aspect of what the demons’ jobs are, their relationships with people, why people have died, who’s there, and why.”
According to Hines, “that aspect will be what carries over from Oxenfree.” That being said, he was still sure to reiterate the fact that Afterparty is different from Oxenfree in terms of tone. “The tone of Afterparty is very different in that it’s not meant to be a spooky, mysterious thing, it’s a madcap, crazy, raunchy comedy. But, there’s still just a lot of history and weight to all of the characters.”
After Adam’s comments, Sean Krankel chimed in and revealed an element of the game that may appeal to players who enjoyed that it felt like the world was its own character while you made decisions in Oxenfree. “One of the things that happens right when the game begins is that you get assigned a personal demon…that is born from choices that you, as the player, make fairly early on in this hell processing moment,” he stated.
“So this character, her name is Sister Mary Wormhorn, she is born of the two player characters’ answers and then that character is constantly coming back and taunting you and doing things based on the choices that you made to make you feel like ‘Did I do the right thing?’” He went on to comically compare the character to Death from Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. “Ultimately, I think that personal demon does, in a more comedic way, manifest a lot of that ‘the game is watching me’ feeling…Tonally very different, but I think it serves a similar function.”
Afterparty will release for PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Xbox One sometime this year. When it comes to PC, this game will be an Epic Games Store exclusive for one year after launch; consequently, Oxenfree is free to download on the storefront right now.
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