Moving on and jamming out in the follow-up to Coffee Talk

Developer Pikselnesia

Publisher Fellow Traveller

Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch

Origin Indonesia

Release 2022

This narrative game’s unusual title is actually two puns in one. It’s a reference, of course, to the afterlife, which factors into its plot, as the lead character, young musician Rama, finds he’s still able to hear the voice of his recently deceased girlfriend. And there’s a second play on words for those who can speak Indonesian, as explained by creator Mohammad Fahmi Husni – better known mononymously as Fahmi. “This game is about moving on from your past love, Cinta, which is a pretty common name in Indonesia. It also means love, so Afterlove can also mean After Cinta,” he laughs.

Afterlove EP sets the scene with a prologue inspired by the first ten minutes of Pixar’s Up, while its hand-drawn comicstyle animations are reminiscent of Florence. “Something we learned during development is that it’s kind of hard to make people relate to what the character is feeling if we don’t introduce the lovers first,” Fahmi explains, as we watch Rama and Cinta’s romance slowly blooming – from Rama plucking up the courage to speak to the girl who sits a school desk away from him, to a montage of the pair’s hands across a table sharing a coffee or a meal. And then a first, sudden sign of illness.