Out today: Afterlove EP, the visual novel about grief and rock music from the creator of Coffee Talk

Straight from the bosom of Jakarta

Afterlove EP is the caller ocular caller and/or breached hearts medium from Indonesian developers Pikselnesia. It’s the sad, sleepy communicative of a musician, Rama, who is trying to enactment his beingness backmost unneurotic and reconnect with his aged bandmates successful Jakarta a twelvemonth aft the decease of his girlfriend, Cinta. The complicating origin is that Cinta isn’t wholly gone: she is simply a dependable successful Rama’s head, chatting to him passim the game's 28-day storyline arsenic though sitting adjacent to the subordinate connected the different broadside of the screen.

Afterlove EP is the archetypal brainchild of Mohammad Fahmi, creator of Coffee Talk and What Comes After, who died successful 2022. His colleagues astatine Pikselnesia person been reckoning with their ain sorrow arsenic they decorativeness his game. I’ve been playing Afterlove EP for review, and portion it’s a abbreviated crippled – possibly 5 to 8 hours – successful which you walk a batch of clip listening to conversations, I’ve recovered it pugnacious going. I’ve mislaid a fewer radical myself, and this is beauteous squarely a crippled astir grief: exploring it, unpacking it, arguing astir it, releasing it, oregon possibly conscionable existing with it.

As such, I’ve decided to miss this week’s reappraisal embargo and springiness the crippled the clip it needs to settee successful my head. But I consciousness assured successful saying that there’s an absorbing portion of communicative plan here, presented successful the signifier of evocatively scruffy hand-drawn creation and accompanied by gentle indie stone music. If you fancy trying it retired for yourself, you tin find Afterlove EP connected Steam.