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

Afterlove EP is the new visual novel and/or broken hearts album from Indonesian developers Pikselnesia. It’s the sad, sleepy tale of a musician, Rama, who is trying to put his life back together and reconnect with his old bandmates in Jakarta a year after the death of his girlfriend, Cinta. The complicating factor is that Cinta isn’t entirely gone: she is a voice in Rama’s head, chatting to him throughout the game’s 28-day storyline as though sitting next to the player on the other side of the screen.

Afterlove EP is the original brainchild of Mohammad Fahmi, creator of Coffee Talk and What Comes After, who died in 2022. His colleagues at Pikselnesia have been reckoning with their own sorrow as they finish his game. I’ve been playing Afterlove EP for review, and while it’s a short game – maybe five to eight hours – in which you spend a lot of time listening to conversations, I’ve found it tough going. I’ve lost a few people myself, and this is pretty squarely a game about grief: exploring it, unpacking it, arguing about it, releasing it, or perhaps just existing with it.

As such, I’ve decided to miss this week’s review embargo and give the game the time it needs to settle in my head. But I feel confident in saying that there’s an interesting piece of narrative design here, presented in the form of evocatively scruffy hand-drawn art and accompanied by gentle indie rock music. If you fancy trying it out for yourself, you can find Afterlove EP on Steam.