After School Afterlife’s Retrospective (yes it was released!)

After School Afterlife is available on Steam!

Back in 2020, I had participated in a game jam with my friends where the first prototype of After School Afterlife was made. Back then, I had no coding experience and relied on my programmer friends to bring the game to life. I worked on the art. My sister worked on the music. As most indie game stories go, I naively thought “hey let’s make this a full game!“ which led to After School Afterlife feeling like a weight on my shoulders for many years as I refused to abandon the game. A game featuring Peranakan culture, Singaporean ghost stories, and delicious local cuisine just didn’t exist and I really wanted to share that world.

We ended up taking a break from After School Afterlife in a hiatus that lasted several years because we ended up working on Rusted Moss, a game we convinced our friend Emlise to make. While Rusted Moss was a passion project through and through with a unique mechanic we weren’t sure players would take to, it was also an inherently more commercial project than After School Afterlife. It was a game with a clear appeal and solid mechanic.

When Rusted Moss released, I realised that it had become far easier to talk about Rusted Moss than After School Afterlife. It wasn’t just that one game was out and the other wasn’t. It was more that I suddenly felt vulnerable sharing After School Afterlife with others as it was a game extremely personal to me, one that I wouldn’t have spent years making if I wasn’t also passionate about it. I actually hesitated to share it with the Rusted Moss discord just because I felt it would inherently get compared to Rusted Moss. It was easier for me to keep After School Afterlife to myself than to share something personal with another and be faced with indifference. Emlise ended up convincing me to just share it on the discord and use Rusted Moss socials for it. She had been a long time fan of After School Afterlife even before I became friends with her. We met doing game jams on GM48 and her comment on the jam version of After School Afterlife definitely played a part in motivating me to expand it to a full game.

Emlise waited 5 years and did indeed buy a copy of After School Afterlife.

Funnily enough, one could argue that Rusted Moss would not have existed without After School Afterlife as it might not have gotten made if Emlise and I didn’t end up meeting on a game jam and becoming friends.

After School Afterlife would also not have been completed if not for my friends ivanbje and Nyveon who helped program the game when I could not. The game would definitely not have gotten completed if not for Riuku who helped step in when I was flailing around and was able to contribute his much needed programming skills that helped After School Afterlife across the finish line. Hokori was much needed moral support through the years as I despaired with the thought the game might never get completed. He also painstakingly helped with QA even when we didn’t have dev tools that would have made that a lot easier. Oh, I guess I should thank my sister, sunnydaze, too. She had a full time job and still managed to write amazing soundtracks and edit my prose. You can tell she didn’t edit this blog post because of how wordy everything is so I hope she’ll never read it.

There is a tremendous amount of relief that After School Afterlife is released. Part of it is that whenever we discussed any kind of spiritual successor to Rusted Moss or future large game project, it was all contingent on not having something unfinished hanging over my head. With the relief also comes a bit of bashfulness. I wish I didn’t feel that way but I know that in whatever game dev meet up I go to, people would much rather hear about Rusted Moss and I can’t shake the feeling that the value of a project I work on is somewhat reliant on a third party’s opinion. Every indie dev knows that you have to promote your own game but it is much easier for me to just talk about Rusted Moss because it is a safer bet. I think I end up being apologetic whenever I mention After School Afterlife like I am wasting somebody’s time.

There is a big part of me that fights against that feeling because I know that I do love After School Afterlife and I don’t think I have wasted the time of friends who have put their time and effort into this game to see it across the finish line. My family back home even sent me photos I could use as references for the game. My father doesn’t game yet he sent me reference pictures of my great grandmother’s house when he last went to visit because he too was excited I was making a game featuring our local culture.

My brother sent me these photos he took during the Hungry Ghost Festival in Singapore.

I think After School Afterlife is also just a physical reminder of my own game dev journey - moreso than Rusted Moss even. I didn’t know how to use Gamemaker before it but now I do. I also learned a lot about pixel art in the 5 years between the game jam version and the release version. With how personal it is, I think it is inevitable I have strong attachments and feelings to it.

Sisters’ room in the game jam version

Sisters’ room in the final version of After School Afterlife (Improvement!)

We committed to finishing After School Afterlife knowing it wouldn’t sell well. I kinda hate how I frame it like the number of copies sold in a game can determine its value. However, I think it is a relatable feeling many creators have. More the feeling of joy you get when somebody shares in the experience of whatever you made and fewer copies sold typically means fewer people have seen it. I do take a lot of solace in that many of our reviews understood exactly what we set out to achieve. It is impossible to describe what it means when a game has “soul“ because I think all creators put a piece of themselves in whatever they make. However, I do think our game reflects this to an extreme. In many ways, that was the point of the game - nobody else could have made this game, it truly is tied deeply to who we are as developers.

I’m happy that there are some players who have found our game a surprising discovery though. We were featured on a youtube video: I Played New Releases Until I Found A Hidden Gem (AGAIN!!) and were given the spot of “Hidden Gem“. In the comments, the video creator acknowledged people would be skeptical of After School Afterlife but they did find our game really good. Reading that made me reflect a bit that that I weirdly share that same skepticism. It is that insecurity that keeps me from comfortably sharing the game but I do take heart from the positivity that we have gotten. Maybe if I find it in me to overcome my skepticism for this game I made (and adore) that I can have hope that there are still people out there who will one day discover this game and also find some secret joy in it as well.