Just last week, the Night School Studio released After the event on the switch, a release we absolutely loved. Next up until the years of 2016 Oxenfree proves to be a worthy success, mixing it with a shameless dark story with a cut that focuses on the direct interplay of cutscenes with gameplay.
Given that Afterparty in many ways stands out differently among the many releases in the eShop now, we thought it would be nice to have a chat about the talent behind the release and gain some insight into what the production was like. We had a chance to talk to anyone other than Sean Krankel – one of the studio's founders – and heard several exciting details about basic studio philosophy, cut-scenes and ideas that didn't make it a full release, even a little bit about what could follow Night School.
NL: For anyone who doesn't know Afterparty, tell us a little about the layout and what kind of game it is.
Sean Krankel: Afterparty is a game that features a mix between a buddy adventure and a joke where you play as two characters named Milo and Lola in their early twenties. They said they would start what appears to be a promising good life when they die cruelly and find out if they are in hell, or we don't know why now. As they are about to be explored in hell, sort of going to the DMV to get your driver's license, they find that there is a hole where you can be invited to a Satanic house party and get rid of the devil, giving you a re-entry to Earth. This rarely happens, maybe only once a day, is actually impossible. But, for the player, the game is like a mix Superbad and Beetlejuice together in this pub crawls in hell.
the game is a bit like mixing Superbad and Beetlejuice together in this hell-passing journey.
Your team is made up of both other Ex-Disney and Telltale employees, so what lessons from there can you say can influence the growth of Afterparty?
I think we have an excellent collection of people who want you to engage with the story in new ways. Looking at our Disney and Telltale backgrounds, the idea of integrating news and gameplay mechanics has been something that really compels us. Before Oxenfree, many media games would have been in touch with the cutscene and what the cutscene would do it is possible have a branching chat then you will go back to playing gameplay and be kind of this back and forth between gameplay and story. We wanted to see how we could make those two things the same. How do we make these two things the same? How do we build a game that doesn't take control away from the player? Something that empowers you to behave in this world even if you want and have an agency to change the story in a way that other games can't deliver.
I am one of Disney's leading people, and for me, what I have tried to emulate in the studio is to focus on building a world of weights. It tries to find ways in which we find ourselves with characters that are genuinely related to the world built in really fun places. Situations that are easy to understand without getting too into the games themselves can be the kind of experience we want to convey. "Gather your way out of hell" with the basic hope that one can & # 39; t find it & # 39; On the Telltale side, there was a lot the team wanted to build on what Lettale used to do. They were a very high quality storytelling company, but the gameplay and interpretation between gameplay and cutscenes was something we thought we could improve. Specifically Afterparty, we took the free-flow dialogue program we had at Oxenfree and built on that by making a variety of drinks that could open up whole new branches to conversations and personalities. It was a story of how we made the game an extension of what you you want to say and do it and it actually won't make you feel limited or that there is a choice & # 39; right or wrong & # 39; It should feel more like a personality test, not what we as developers want to do do you do.
It was a story of how we made the game an extension of what you want to say and do it
Has it always been a plan since the beginning to follow Oxenfree for the same previously mentioned topic?
In short, no. We knew we wanted to continue down this road of narrative, but we had no idea whether we were using the same equipment or what we were saving at Oxenfree compared to what we had left behind. Once Oxenfree came out and we saw how the audience reacted to Alex (the main protagonist), exactly how they managed to properly describe Alex as their own, we thought it would be kind of silly to leave things that worked well for us. So, all that said, we want to put together the best possible experience for what Oxenfree has done. I think we came to a really good space, where this is a comedic comedy and Oxenfree is a supernatural thriller.
I think there is a lot of heart and many similar age themes present in both games. Oxenfree explores the idea of how we make you feel like a powerful character in a supernatural, while at Afterparty we want to see what happens when you can play as two characters and play with everything you'd expect from a movie fan but now make them playable. At first, Milo and Lola feel like they are figuratively close and then – without wasting anything – when the story begins to see the gravity of a long-distance friendship and we show how ways like how we put together a story and how gameplay mechanics work. We're always trying to find ways to change what you can expect. I guess I said we knew we didn't want to make a & # 39; ppyy & # 39;
Should you leave any ideas or gameplay ideas down on the floor of the room? If so, how were they?
Yes, of course. At Afterparty, I think one of the things that ended up being a bit uneven was when we discovered that it requires a stronger interaction with drinks that could bring greater risk and reward for what you drink. We had a version where you have to worry about puking, about darkening and waking up to a new place, but when we sorted all those things out and checked them out, we found that none of them were fun. It was actually kind of sad and bizarre. We then opted to treat the drinks in the game as Harry Potter-esque potions, enabling us to create new and less controversial branches of resource management. Otherwise there wasn't much left behind. I think we started with a much bigger game than we did, which is already much bigger than Oxenfree. I think any cuts along the way would have been a good boost for the Afterparty focus and I think they were finally the right angles.
We had a version where you have to worry about puking, about darkening and waking up in a new place
What are some of the biggest challenges in the Afterparty development cycle?
We had quite a few, they all came from our eyes that were bigger than our stomachs. The other big one was to get a world full of up to thirty or forty people on the screen at one time. At Oxenfree, we had at least four or five characters on the screen, and Afterparty lets you navigate the suburbs and bars that have all these characters with their own way of talking and talking. There have been many challenges depending on how those scenes are set up. In addition, in the style of art, we have decided to move into the 3D process depending on how our art is made. At Oxenfree, all domains were 2D while characters were 3D, but Afterparty had everything in 3D.
We had to increase the size of the group, but not so much that we couldn't make the game, so we had to find clear ways to mix 2D and 3D material to make this 3D look happen. In addition, having a great cast meant having a great cast of voice actors. We have been working with a few different players' programs and they have all fortunately done a wonderful job and we were fortunate to have people who want to continue working with us after Oxenfree. So, the talent was great, but we were done three hundred characters models and over thirty players and Oxenfree was five actors. To summarize it, I would say that size and scope were major challenges; we wanted to make something that felt as big or small as a movie starred by Pstrong but with a small team working on it.
What was the process of writing Afterparty text?
All credit for the team writing here! The lead author of this script is Adam Hines, my cousin and the founder of the channel. Adam wrote everything about Oxenfree, but with Afterparty we eventually expanded the team and added three more writers, all of whom were classic Lettale creatures or had an animated background. There were some new issues here about having a comparative team of writers, a collaborative writer working on, but the benefit of it was that we could come away from the production of Oxenfree's "movie playable" Rick and Morty either Horse Hunt either The Simpsons where there is an unchanging arc, but within that each claim can feel like episodes. You can follow a specific set of characters for twenty to thirty minutes and it is a bit different than the characters you will encounter in the next section. So, it was kind of cool to let each writer change individually as they wanted, all of this happening under Adam's rule.
I think the script came with at least 110,000 words; in the size of many movie scripts.
One of the things we did early in the morning to make sure that things didn't feel too self-explanatory was to explain Milo and Lola's journey and what we wanted to see in them. The story is ultimately about their long-term friendship and the challenges that come with it. All the requirements are designed to mock and exclude the various features of these mainstream media.
Initially, we decided on five or six conclusions that we wanted the players to see, knowing that these were based on what you want to see come out of this type of story and at the end of the second act we & # 39; we also dig deeper into their relationship. So, when all of that was in place and we knew where we wanted their friendship to end (s), then we were able to put all the writers to fill in the gaps with their quest ideas. I really don't want to make it over. It is a great balancing act for writers to go between telling a great story and giving a narrative agency to the players while removing this spaghetti literary element. I think the script came with at least 110,000 words; in the size of many movie scripts. Having one primary writer early on is really helpful.
If so, what are your main inspirations (books, movies, etc.) or what influences did you draw on while writing this?
We wanted the actors to laugh and feel like these characters were re-related, but dealing with almost unrelated ones, is bigger than life situations. So, we've watched a lot of Edgar Wright movies, Beetlejuice, Superbad, Excellent Bilb and Ted, all of these things focused on the great relationship between the best friends surrounded by the outside world. Making a movie version of that movie was initially appealing to us. Speaking of stubbornness, however, I think Adam and the team had a lot of fun because we treated this world like all religion is right. There is nothing limited in this, so where appropriate, we borrow from, say, the Bible, while in some cases borrow from theological or other popular philosophies. It has always been about finding ways to apply the themes of our story to all those interpretations and ideas of the afterlife. So, inspiration was a fun mix of these low-brow movies and a certain high-tech sub-theme of the moving world.
What was the recording process like?
It was different! Most of the actors were from home, fortunately, and with our studio being in LA, most of the actors either live nearby or have a permanent residency. We already had the best recording studio we worked with at Oxenfree and much of that programming was edited from our previous experience. The challenging part came from the script extending the rewrite with various branches. It's hard to keep bringing the talent back in and we have a lot of players busy with tight schedules working together to hit the deadline we want.
The other thing above that, specifically for Milo and Lola, had to do with how many drinks you could drink. In any given bar, there are five different personality types that you can go with based on drinks and general choices. So, to get the actors in the right position to talk, talk like a one-line pirate read and speak like a mobster or tell a bad vaudevillian joke about another made up for the pendulum sweating. At Oxenfree, most of the tone was consistent. But Afterparty, being a comedian, was everywhere with a huge range of drinks and how much it still must be funny. In that way, the direction was very interesting, and the schedules were inclined when you got all these players busy to participate.
to make the characters in the right position, say, to speak as a living being
line read and talk like a mobster or tell bad vaudevillian jokes
the other for a pendulum swipe.
How did you get all the different effects of the drink?
It was fun! We actually betrayed ourselves and that didn't end well, so we stopped doing that! The magical moment & # 39; aha! & # 39; For us this is where we realized that we could use drinks to reflect the cartoon personality. At first, we thought that the drinks would just show how we all behave in real life. For example, one may make you play less and the other may make you more aggressive. However, the more we get into it, the more we realize that we can combine these drinks and have themes working in different puzzles and challenges. In addition, we can do some serious outside the country drinks! At its core, the drink program shows someone going out and saying "it's going to be a tequila night, because I want to go to parties!" We wanted to expand that, and that helped with how we developed things like venues and newsrooms. Oxenfree was like a normal world driven by these strange, larger than life conditions, but in Afterparty it's like the rest of the world can be like Pstrong's limited world. We can let the characters go into a three-dimensional, S&M-shaped demon bar and make a lot of jokes about that, or we can deal with dark things but because of the funny humor, we can be pretty good at it. Therefore, the drinks were borrowed from that source; they are funny in the sense and make people want to explore further.
It is our impression that during the production of Afterparty, your team was producing at one time Stranger Things that never saw the light of day due to the collapse of the Telltale Games. What happened with what was left of it? If so, what ideas or ideas would you explore for that release that you would like to reread?
That's a good question. I have not publicly confirmed or denied this, but I will say that we have been working on a game like this and it's just … it's gone now. Like, there is some sort of game that exists and is not perfect, and after the Telltale wrap, so does the game. There are some things we would like to repeat. I won't go into detail, but I will say that one of the things we want to continue to pursue is how to put the story together in ways that are not just conversations. While in Oxenfree there was almost a hundred percent of chat, and in Afterparty there was chat, drinks, and other activities and minigames. At Stranger Things, we played a lot of ways to include branch stories based on action, time of day, and a bunch of other things. It was a really cool project, and I think those ideas will fit into what we want to do next.
I have never publicly confirmed or denied this, but I will say it
have been working on such a game and it's just kind of … past now.
In the next game, do you want to do some narrative releases focusing on Afterparty and Oxenfree? If not, what other types would you like to explore?
At the core of whatever we do, storytelling will take place and so on be there. What I mean is that you will have a character that goes through some kind of arc and have an interesting connection with other characters and logically the player will have a lot of agency in that. That said, I don't think we are completely married using the same interview system again, or using the same camera view. There are a lot of ideas thrown around as we are in the discovery phase of this future that includes many ways to interact with the game world. It's unbelievable that we'll ever get away from the narrative then, or in something like a multiplayer game or something like that.
Another thing is that we like to explore new genres and tones from a narrative perspective, such as from Oxenfree to Afterparty. Not to mention that we want to wander between ideas, but why not make a romantic comedy or a twisting game? There is a whole world of other types of stories out there that can benefit from player-driven narratives. There are some ideas for how to research the character from Oxenfree or Afterparty as well. We're so young at the thought of everything we don't want to get rid of until we have a good reason for "how?", We want to make sure we push our mechanics forward before making major decisions. So, there is a guarantee that our technicians will move on or on new paths, but the genre is still far from the air.
What are some ways to trick you from the critical reception and trading into Afterparty?
We were surprised at how much people connected with the subject and the characters. I think it's a difficult game to sell if you don't immediately connect with the higher mind. People who play the game realize that there are many layers to it. Yes, there are elements of humor and entertainment, but there is a heart-to-heart story with a multiplayer organization. It was great to see that people interacted with that, because if the characters or the world were not compulsory, the whole game would not be for everyone.
The other thing is how amazing it is every time people don't see a job done. There are certain things that we have spent months working on and getting that person out of the way. I'm not going to say what those things are because I look for people to know about them! The flipside, of course, people think they see things and they don't. They expect an easter egg, or that this connects the dots to a large ARG or Oxenfree, and there's not much of that here. It's fun to watch people free themselves for that matter, I enjoyed getting some distance from the game and seeing what people liked. When you post it, it's hard not to look at the game as a lot of effort from the last two years, but it's nice to watch people interact with it just for what it is. Over the course of the next year or two, we're still planning more support for Afterparty by introducing it to new platforms and possibly more content.
I enjoyed getting the distance from the game and seeing what people liked.
Aside from contributing too much, what other ideas do you have for additional content?
All I can say is that the first thoughts center around what would be used more & # 39; s episodes & # 39; the world. What we really want to play about who you play with and what your goals are. It may not be the case with Milo and Lola again. Maybe by someone else. We want to make sure there is a reason for more content to exist, we just don't want to release random DLC. However, there are already some intriguing ideas inside that people are starting to get together. So, not guaranteed, but this is a fun time to post when deciding what to focus on next. Is it something new? Does it continue to build other worlds already made? I think it's going to be a little bit of both.
Finally, what games have you played recently?
About forty hours into Dragon Quest XI! I didn't expect to find out that in that game, I'm not even playing JRPG. However, something recently touched me about that game, I think part of it has to do with my seven-year-old daughter. He is grounded and can play it easily. So, Dragon Quest recently consumed me on the switch, on other platforms I've been working with Jedi: The Fallen Order and Surprising Death. I will continue to apply plodding with Dragon Quest until Animal Crossing and Doom Get out!
Many thanks to Sean for taking the time to answer our questions. We look forward to the next big project from Night School Studio. In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts on Afterparty and your favorite drinks from it in the comments below. And if you haven't come to download it yet, what are you waiting for?
