DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL
AFTERPARTY (PEGI 18) PS4, XBOX ONE, SWITCH, PC ★★★ ★★
IF POPULAR culture has taught me anything, it’s that death and the Devil can be beaten... or at least, distracted.
In The Seventh Seal, the Knight keeps Death occupied with chess; when the Devil went down to Georgia, Johnny beat him with a fiddle, and it was a game of Twister that proved the Grim Reaper’s undoing against Bill and Ted.
But when Milo and Lola rock up to the Devil’s bar – things take a decidedly more boozy turn.
Indie developer Night School Studio, which created the spooky, 80s-style thriller Oxenfree, has created a very different depiction of
Hell – less fire and brimstone, more neon lights and back alley dives.
There’s no real explanation as to how the best buds find themselves now deceased, but they quickly discover there’s a loophole – outdrink the Devil, and you can return to life on Earth.
Frankly, with the current state of things in the realm of the living, an eternity of light torture between the hours of 9 to 5, then hitting the bar to drown your sorrows sounds rather appealing, but I digress.
The game’s real strength is its script, witty and well-paced dialogue which unfolds all around you – from banter between passing friends, overheard snippets of chatter, or conversation which moves the story along. You can even interrupt someone in the middle of a wittering speech to speed up the game, making the whole thing feel rich and interactive.
The characters you meet on your journey through the land of the dead are interesting too.
Rather than a parade of serial killers, despots, psychopaths and reality TV stars, most of your fellow Hell-dwellers are not evil ... they’re just not particularly good.
Much like Netflix’s The Good Place (and if you haven’t seen it, stop reading this and watch it), you learn pretty quickly that simply stopping yourself from being the worst you can be, is not a moral achievement.
The choices you make allegedly help to shape how the story unfolds, and while it does to some extent it never feels like it alters the plot direction too much.
Interacting with characters gives you multiple choices for dialogue, and the same goes for when you take part in the drinking games, then you gain some ‘liquid courage’ that enables you to be more assertive, more flirty, or just talk like a pirate.
As colourful as the dialogue is, and as intriguing as the inmates are, the game is also alive with unwelcome bugs and glitches.
Visual glitches, frequent slowdowns, and crashes tarnish the experience, which is an incredible shame as it’s an intriguing world to get wrapped up in.
The big problem is that you’re just starting to get properly invested in things and ... it’s all over. At around five and a bit hours it feels shorter than necessary, leaving you with an unexpected pang that you wanted to spend longer in the bright neon lights of the underworld.
It would be interesting to see what Night School Studio could have done with this title had it had a bigger budget, but it cements the indie developer as an up-andcoming star.
■ Buy it: £16.74 from microsoft. com, or £15.99 from store. playstation.com