This portion of the Luigi's Mansion 3 guide contains a walkthrough for your first official objectives. After installing the elevator tracker, you'll need to practice contacting Professor E.Gadd by opening up your menu and connecting to the Professor E.Gadd Hotline. Once that's done, you'll have your main objective: recover E. Gadd's Briefcase.

These objectives will take you through the Basement (B!), Grand Lobby (Floor 1), and part of the Mezzanine (Floor 2). Near the end of this mission, you'll have to defeat the Maid Boss who has swallowed Professor E.Gadd's briefcase. After returning to the lab, Professor E.Gadd will give you the gift (and curse) of being able to summon Gooigi.

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This portion of the Luigi's Mansion 3 guide includes the Dance Hall Walkthrough featuring every dance hall gem location. More importantly, it explains how to get the elevator button from the dancing ghosts and how to defeat the DJ ghost boss that appears after the dancers leave.

Once all of that is taken care of, the final area of the Dance Hall can be explored (which is where you'll find the final gem). Note: there is more to do after this section so check back when the full walkthrough is revealed on the game's release date for the final section(s) of Luigi's Mansion 3.

Below are the walkthrough sections and objectives. Please note we may have added a few objectives ourselves to indicate the steps you need to take to complete the main objective. Objectives that don't directly appear on your menu are italicized. 

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Luigi's Mansion may directly trace its lineage to the Super Mario franchise, but the series is in many ways its complete antithesis. Whereas Mario's adventures whisk players through vibrant worlds laden with pits, lava pools, and other platforming challenges to overcome, Luigi's have been decidedly more methodical, trading the colorful backdrops of his brother's titles for cobwebbed corridors, and emphasizing careful observation over quick reflex. Luigi's Mansion 3 very much continues this tradition, but the tightly crafted set pieces developer Next Level Games has assembled here illustrate just how compelling this style of gameplay remains, and the new mechanics and freer structure make it perhaps the best installment in the series yet.

Once again, Mario's cowardly brother finds himself unwittingly thrust into the role of hero when Mario, Princess Peach, and her entourage of Toad attendants are kidnapped shortly after the group checks into the ominously named Last Resort hotel. Luigi narrowly avoids this same fate by escaping down a laundry chute and landing in the hotel's basement, where he soon reunites with eccentric paranormal researcher Professor E. Gadd and his trusty Poltergust--a modified vacuum cleaner that can suck up ghosts.

The Poltergust serves as the basis of Luigi's entire range of actions in Luigi's Mansion 3. Despite being a more adept jumper than his brother, Luigi doesn't display any of his leaping prowess here; the lanky plumber's feet are planted firmly to the floor throughout nearly the entire adventure. His primary means of interacting with the environment instead comes through the Poltergust's numerous abilities. On top of being able to suck up debris and blow out air, the vacuum comes equipped with both the Strobulb and Dark-Light from Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon; the former releases a blinding flash of light that can stun ghosts and activate certain switches, while the latter reveals invisible objects and enemies.

Complementing these is a handful of satisfying new abilities. The Suction Shot fires a plunger that can attach to certain objects, allowing Luigi to swing or pull them, while the Burst releases a gust of air that knocks crowds of enemies back and lifts the plumber momentarily off the ground. The most vital addition to Luigi's ghost-hunting repertoire, however, is the ability to slam ghosts. Latch onto a spectre with the Poltergust and you'll charge up a meter that lets you bash them repeatedly on the floor, inflicting extra damage.

Not only do these new abilities feel like natural extensions of Luigi's skill set, they inject a welcome bit of action to the gameplay. They also open up new approaches for taking on adversaries. In past games, ghost encounters typically amounted to first stunning them with your flashlight, then vacuuming them up. You'll still rely primarily on the Strobulb to control crowds of enemies, but now you can slam one ghost into any others that are nearby, damaging multiple foes at once. Later encounters will force you to use the other skills at your disposal as well, making battles consistently enjoyable.

Outside of combat, the Poltergust's most significant new feature is the ability to summon Gooigi--a gooey doppelganger of Luigi originally introduced in the 3DS remake of the first game. Gooigi's role has been expanded here, opening up a new range of puzzles to overcome. The goopy clone retains the same abilities as Luigi, but his gelatinous body can slip through fences, grates, and even spike traps, allowing him to bypass seemingly insurmountable obstacles and discover hidden corners of the hotel. Moreover, certain enemies and objects will be much too large for Luigi to swing on his own, requiring the extra set of hands Gooigi provides, and a number of rooms feature pressure-sensitive tiles that one character will need to stand on while the other vacuums up whatever emerges.

Once you unlock Gooigi, you can play through almost the entire adventure cooperatively with another nearby player, and the game lends itself well to either co-op or solo play. Many of the puzzles you'll encounter require Luigi and Gooigi to work in tandem, which makes exploring the hotel with a friend enjoyable. Solo players, meanwhile, can swap between Luigi and Gooigi by pressing the right thumbstick in, allowing you to quickly take control of either character as the situation demands. You'll never encounter a scenario that cannot be overcome solo, although a handful of bosses and puzzles are clearly designed with a second player in mind. While these are still very much beatable on your own, they are a bit more cumbersome when you're juggling control of both characters.

Much like Dark Moon, Luigi's Mansion 3 makes clever use of your small clutch of abilities. Every puzzle you encounter while exploring the Last Resort can be surmounted by observing your surroundings and employing some combination of these skills, although it certainly won't seem that way for many. You'll frequently come across puzzles that offer no obvious solution, which makes finally sussing out the answer all the more satisfying. The game rarely reuses ideas as well, so each challenge you face feels fresh.

On top of that, the hotel houses a wealth of collectibles to find. Coins, pearls, bars of gold, and other valuables are copiously tucked away in treasure chests, drawers, toilets, and any other compartment you can imagine, encouraging you to poke around. Most enticing, however, are the six unique gems on each floor. Many of these are deviously hidden, and you'll need to study your surroundings carefully to figure out how to uncover them. Even the gems that are in plain sight will often require an outside-the-box solution before you can actually collect them, which makes taking the time to explore every nook and cranny of the building constantly rewarding.

Each floor of the Last Resort acts as its own self-contained level and adheres to a different theme, running the gamut from typical hotel amenities like restaurants and gift shops to more outlandish lodgings such as medieval castles and ancient Egyptian pyramids. Despite these disparate themes, the floors all feel of a piece, and the variety keeps the adventure pleasantly surprising throughout. Gaining access to a new floor is always a delight because you never quite know what to expect when the elevator door opens. Moreover, the game eschews the mission-based nature of Dark Moon in favor of a much looser structure. Barring a few instances, most of which occur early on in the adventure, Luigi won't be recalled to E. Gadd's lab after completing objectives, allowing you to explore the hotel at your leisure.

When you first begin your quest, however, you'll only have access to the basement and main lobby; to reach the rest of the hotel, you'll need to track down elevator buttons to the other floors, and these are typically in the possession of a boss ghost. These boss encounters are another highlight; each one has a distinct personality that's charmingly conveyed through their animations, and you'll come across all manner of characters, from a film director melodramatically mourning the loss of his beloved director's cone to a skittish security guard who is just as startle-prone as Luigi. These personalities help elevate the bosses above the rather forgettable ones from Dark Moon, and each battle makes use of Luigi's skill set in clever ways.

The controls, however, will occasionally get in your way. To shine the Dark-Light, you need to hold the X button, which means you can't move the right analog stick to adjust your aim while using that ability. The game compensates for this by letting you aim using motion controls, but it isn't a proper replacement for dual analog; you're limited to aiming up and down, making it an inelegant solution. The Suction Shot suffers from a similar issue; you'll often need to hold the button down to line up your shots, making it likewise difficult to aim, particularly during high-pressure situations. None of these issues are severe enough to detract significantly from the game, but they are an occasional annoyance.

Rounding out the package are two dedicated multiplayer modes: ScareScraper and ScreamPark. The former plays out much as it did in Dark Moon, challenging up to eight players--either locally or online--to complete successive floors of a tower within a strict time limit. Each floor has a specific objective, such as defeating every ghost or collecting a certain amount of money, and you'll need to work together to clear the challenges. ScreamPark, meanwhile, is a local-only party mode in which two teams compete against each other in mini-games. There are three different mini-games to choose from; one has teams vying to suck up the most ghosts within the time limit, while another has them floating around a pool, collecting coins while avoiding mines. Both modes can be fun diversions, particularly ScareScraper, which straddles the line between competitive and cooperative. As they stand, however, they're comparatively shallow and lack the same appeal as the main game.

But while the multiplayer modes may not hold your attention for long, the strength of the Luigi's Mansion series has always stemmed from the satisfaction of exploring its carefully constructed settings, and in that regard Luigi's Mansion 3 certainly succeeds. The game may not radically diverge from the series' formula, but it offers up another meticulously crafted set of challenges to overcome while smoothing out some of the issues that held Dark Moon back, and the sense of accomplishment you feel when you clear a particularly head-scratching obstacle is just as potent now as the first time Luigi unwillingly strapped a vacuum to his back and stepped into a haunted mansion.

Luigi's Mansion may directly trace its lineage to the Super Mario franchise, but the series is in many ways its complete antithesis. Whereas Mario's adventures whisk players through vibrant worlds laden with pits, lava pools, and other platforming challenges to overcome, Luigi's have been decidedly more methodical, trading the colorful backdrops of his brother's titles for cobwebbed corridors, and emphasizing careful observation over quick reflex. Luigi's Mansion 3 very much continues this tradition, but the tightly crafted set pieces developer Next Level Games has assembled here illustrate just how compelling this style of gameplay remains, and the new mechanics and freer structure make it perhaps the best installment in the series yet.

Once again, Mario's cowardly brother finds himself unwittingly thrust into the role of hero when Mario, Princess Peach, and her entourage of Toad attendants are kidnapped shortly after the group checks into the ominously named Last Resort hotel. Luigi narrowly avoids this same fate by escaping down a laundry chute and landing in the hotel's basement, where he soon reunites with eccentric paranormal researcher Professor E. Gadd and his trusty Poltergust--a modified vacuum cleaner that can suck up ghosts.

The Poltergust serves as the basis of Luigi's entire range of actions in Luigi's Mansion 3. Despite being a more adept jumper than his brother, Luigi doesn't display any of his leaping prowess here; the lanky plumber's feet are planted firmly to the floor throughout nearly the entire adventure. His primary means of interacting with the environment instead comes through the Poltergust's numerous abilities. On top of being able to suck up debris and blow out air, the vacuum comes equipped with both the Strobulb and Dark-Light from Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon; the former releases a blinding flash of light that can stun ghosts and activate certain switches, while the latter reveals invisible objects and enemies.

Complementing these is a handful of satisfying new abilities. The Suction Shot fires a plunger that can attach to certain objects, allowing Luigi to swing or pull them, while the Burst releases a gust of air that knocks crowds of enemies back and lifts the plumber momentarily off the ground. The most vital addition to Luigi's ghost-hunting repertoire, however, is the ability to slam ghosts. Latch onto a spectre with the Poltergust and you'll charge up a meter that lets you bash them repeatedly on the floor, inflicting extra damage.

Not only do these new abilities feel like natural extensions of Luigi's skill set, they inject a welcome bit of action to the gameplay. They also open up new approaches for taking on adversaries. In past games, ghost encounters typically amounted to first stunning them with your flashlight, then vacuuming them up. You'll still rely primarily on the Strobulb to control crowds of enemies, but now you can slam one ghost into any others that are nearby, damaging multiple foes at once. Later encounters will force you to use the other skills at your disposal as well, making battles consistently enjoyable.

Outside of combat, the Poltergust's most significant new feature is the ability to summon Gooigi--a gooey doppelganger of Luigi originally introduced in the 3DS remake of the first game. Gooigi's role has been expanded here, opening up a new range of puzzles to overcome. The goopy clone retains the same abilities as Luigi, but his gelatinous body can slip through fences, grates, and even spike traps, allowing him to bypass seemingly insurmountable obstacles and discover hidden corners of the hotel. Moreover, certain enemies and objects will be much too large for Luigi to swing on his own, requiring the extra set of hands Gooigi provides, and a number of rooms feature pressure-sensitive tiles that one character will need to stand on while the other vacuums up whatever emerges.

Once you unlock Gooigi, you can play through almost the entire adventure cooperatively with another nearby player, and the game lends itself well to either co-op or solo play. Many of the puzzles you'll encounter require Luigi and Gooigi to work in tandem, which makes exploring the hotel with a friend enjoyable. Solo players, meanwhile, can swap between Luigi and Gooigi by pressing the right thumbstick in, allowing you to quickly take control of either character as the situation demands. You'll never encounter a scenario that cannot be overcome solo, although a handful of bosses and puzzles are clearly designed with a second player in mind. While these are still very much beatable on your own, they are a bit more cumbersome when you're juggling control of both characters.

Much like Dark Moon, Luigi's Mansion 3 makes clever use of your small clutch of abilities. Every puzzle you encounter while exploring the Last Resort can be surmounted by observing your surroundings and employing some combination of these skills, although it certainly won't seem that way for many. You'll frequently come across puzzles that offer no obvious solution, which makes finally sussing out the answer all the more satisfying. The game rarely reuses ideas as well, so each challenge you face feels fresh.

On top of that, the hotel houses a wealth of collectibles to find. Coins, pearls, bars of gold, and other valuables are copiously tucked away in treasure chests, drawers, toilets, and any other compartment you can imagine, encouraging you to poke around. Most enticing, however, are the six unique gems on each floor. Many of these are deviously hidden, and you'll need to study your surroundings carefully to figure out how to uncover them. Even the gems that are in plain sight will often require an outside-the-box solution before you can actually collect them, which makes taking the time to explore every nook and cranny of the building constantly rewarding.

Each floor of the Last Resort acts as its own self-contained level and adheres to a different theme, running the gamut from typical hotel amenities like restaurants and gift shops to more outlandish lodgings such as medieval castles and ancient Egyptian pyramids. Despite these disparate themes, the floors all feel of a piece, and the variety keeps the adventure pleasantly surprising throughout. Gaining access to a new floor is always a delight because you never quite know what to expect when the elevator door opens. Moreover, the game eschews the mission-based nature of Dark Moon in favor of a much looser structure. Barring a few instances, most of which occur early on in the adventure, Luigi won't be recalled to E. Gadd's lab after completing objectives, allowing you to explore the hotel at your leisure.

When you first begin your quest, however, you'll only have access to the basement and main lobby; to reach the rest of the hotel, you'll need to track down elevator buttons to the other floors, and these are typically in the possession of a boss ghost. These boss encounters are another highlight; each one has a distinct personality that's charmingly conveyed through their animations, and you'll come across all manner of characters, from a film director melodramatically mourning the loss of his beloved director's cone to a skittish security guard who is just as startle-prone as Luigi. These personalities help elevate the bosses above the rather forgettable ones from Dark Moon, and each battle makes use of Luigi's skill set in clever ways.

The controls, however, will occasionally get in your way. To shine the Dark-Light, you need to hold the X button, which means you can't move the right analog stick to adjust your aim while using that ability. The game compensates for this by letting you aim using motion controls, but it isn't a proper replacement for dual analog; you're limited to aiming up and down, making it an inelegant solution. The Suction Shot suffers from a similar issue; you'll often need to hold the button down to line up your shots, making it likewise difficult to aim, particularly during high-pressure situations. None of these issues are severe enough to detract significantly from the game, but they are an occasional annoyance.

Rounding out the package are two dedicated multiplayer modes: ScareScraper and ScreamPark. The former plays out much as it did in Dark Moon, challenging up to eight players--either locally or online--to complete successive floors of a tower within a strict time limit. Each floor has a specific objective, such as defeating every ghost or collecting a certain amount of money, and you'll need to work together to clear the challenges. ScreamPark, meanwhile, is a local-only party mode in which two teams compete against each other in mini-games. There are three different mini-games to choose from; one has teams vying to suck up the most ghosts within the time limit, while another has them floating around a pool, collecting coins while avoiding mines. Both modes can be fun diversions, particularly ScareScraper, which straddles the line between competitive and cooperative. As they stand, however, they're comparatively shallow and lack the same appeal as the main game.

But while the multiplayer modes may not hold your attention for long, the strength of the Luigi's Mansion series has always stemmed from the satisfaction of exploring its carefully constructed settings, and in that regard Luigi's Mansion 3 certainly succeeds. The game may not radically diverge from the series' formula, but it offers up another meticulously crafted set of challenges to overcome while smoothing out some of the issues that held Dark Moon back, and the sense of accomplishment you feel when you clear a particularly head-scratching obstacle is just as potent now as the first time Luigi unwillingly strapped a vacuum to his back and stepped into a haunted mansion.

The Diablo 4 art book that was revealed in some pre-BlizzCon marketing has been leaked again, this time seemingly showing a page from within the book.

And #DiabloIV pic.twitter.com/yocnkQa5vy

— WeakAuras (@WeakAuras) October 26, 2019

The page, posted on Twitter by World of Warcraft UI account WeakAuras, is focused on Lilith, the Succubus Queen who featured in Diablo 2’s Pandemonium Event. A highlighted quote references that Lilith in Diablo 4 is a reimagining of the character, with a significantly different appearance to the one used for her in Diablo 2. The pose does little to contextualize Lilith's role in the Diablo 4, and so it's unknown if she will act as the game's primary antagonist, or just another boss on the path to (presumably) Diablo himself. If, indeed, Diablo 4 exists, of course.

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Afterparty's version of hell is less fire and brimstone and more cocktails and ennui. Sure, its human inhabitants are still damned for eternity and demons still flagellate them for their sins, but that's just the nine-to-five. To escape the drudgery of everlasting torment, demons and humans alike flock to bars and other seedy hangouts between the days' torture. It isn't the flashiest take on the afterlife, but that's kind of the point. Afterparty revels in the small, personal acts of cruelty and kindness that define us, and while the ways it imparts lessons aren't always up to task with the material, it nonetheless treads exciting ground as a story about the work it takes to be a better person.

Developed by Oxenfree creators Night School Studio, Afterparty follows Milo and Lola, a pair of recent college grads who've just found out they face eternal damnation. After some quick onboarding on how they're to be tortured for the rest of eternity, the pair get a break when their turn in line comes just as the workday ends, giving them a night's reprieve. They then learn there's a way out of their predicament: If they can outparty The Prince of Darkness himself, they can return to the world of the living.

Mechanically, Afterparty keeps things simple. As you walk across rich and detailed 3D backgrounds along a 2D plane, most of your interactions involve talking to the right person at the right time. This puts the spotlight on Afterparty's strongest asset: incredibly verisimilar conversations. The dialogue is lifelike in a way you don't find in most games; characters restart their sentences, which often have a fantastically ad-libbed quality to them; the main voice cast features whip-smart performances from Janina Gavankar, Khoi Dao, Ashly Burch, and Dave Fennoy, who all sell their cartoonish characters' maladjustments without making them overbearing.

Afterparty touches on several topics, including the layout, structure, and the underpinnings of its underworld, which pull heavily from the Bible and Paradise Lost. It makes easy connections between businesspeople and demons, or social media platforms and hellscapes, though the comparisons are all coated in a thick veneer of simmering snark and clever turns of phrases that make the comparisons fun, even if they're not the most imaginative ones.

Afterparty is most at home and most cutting when it delves into more intimate topics. Sister May Wormhorn, a personal demon created to harass Milo and Lola as they try to get the approvals necessary to outparty Satan, torments the pair by sifting through their rougher memories. These end up being not one-off, traumatic events, but rather the kinds of smaller slights and moments that bring out their various hangups: Lola's ostracization from her family due to not only her complex family situation, but her skepticism in the face of her sisters' faith; Milo's demanding parents and search for an identity as the child of an immigrant family. These points come through in ways that are direct, but not didactic, and they make for some of the game's strongest moments.

The aloof but clear sense of resignation that permeates throughout hell's inhabitants also sells Afterparty's vision of the underworld not as a prison for the world's most violent criminals, but as the banal hangout spot for those who simply failed to do enough good. In an early exchange, Milo asks Satan what he and Lola could have done to deserve eternal damnation. Satan cuts back with a pithy anecdote about a man who will ask him the same question 50 years from now, after having set out a dress for his girlfriend knowing it would be too revealing to keep her warm in a movie theater. "The real question, Milo, is, what did you do to deserve anything else?" The way Afterparty imparts this lesson both explicitly, in the moral quandaries its explores in its characters, and in its vibrant-but-benumbing clubs, parks, and sights, makes for a powerful atmosphere.

Not every beat lands, however. The main plot, the one about trying to drink Satan under the table, ends in somewhat anticlimactic fashion, and the threads leading up to that finale are underwhelming. That's in part a result of how the quandaries its characters tackle don't have solid, definable solutions that could make for a more exciting conclusion. But it's also because the overarching plot acts as more of a vehicle for characters to vent their frustrations with the world, the underworld, and each other than a real compelling story on its own. The snarky tone also keeps things from getting too dark, and while I appreciated the lighthearted approach, there were times I wish it would have delved into the darker, riskier territory a game set in hell might invite.

Most of Afterparty has you simply taking in and reacting to conversations, but the ways you interact with those conversations break immersion more often than they deepen it. You interact with conversations largely by deciding when to butt in and when to say nothing. You have a limited but generous timer on how long you can respond to something before it's no longer an appropriate response, though I did find a few spots where dialogue would skip inadvertently. The conversation choices are fairly limited, and in the instances where I was able to play through a section of dialogue a second time through, my choices didn't actually alter the plot all that much, which made the conversation more interactive as a way to keep the game from being one long monologue than anything else.

As you hash out the various problems of demons and humans alike, you're going to want to drink. Imbibing one of the underworldly cocktails you find at bars unlocks new dialogue options; chugging a Blue Devil (potato vodka, cigarette butts, the wailing of injured children, and a melted antoninianus coin) will make you more of a rich jerk, while a Grand Exhibitionist (bourbon, mint, sugar, and a frog's vocal sac) will make you more of a "witty vaudevillian." Many of these are for kicks (you can sound like a pirate while making a point if you really want), but often, you'll need them if you want to branch a conversation a different way or build up the courage to perform certain actions to progress.

Afterparty is most at home and most cutting when it delves into more intimate topics.

It's a neat hook that ties into the themes of the story, but it lacks depth as a central conceit. You get a flourish here and there as you affect different octaves or do impressions as you try to get two lovers to get back together, but none of the branches I went down seemed particularly influenced by my drink of choice. On a couple of occasions the game slyly hints that you should replay it to see different effects for all of your choices, but never really earns it. It highlights the larger choices you make, such as whether you turn in one of two suspects who may be a human sneaking into hell for the fun of it, in review sessions with Wormhorn (who belittles you regardless of what you pick). But aside from one major choice, I wasn't too compelled to see other ways situations could have happened.

Beyond that, Afterparty is fairly straightforward; its puzzles are barebones (the most complicated one involved talking someone into giving me their trenchcoat so Milo and Lola could sneak into a club), and most of the drinking and club mini-games that pop up when it's time to earn a demon's approval are disappointing. That Afterparty keeps its interactions light is mostly to its benefit, but when it tries for something else, it doesn't offer the kinds of powerful moments that come from a game's mechanics and story working together to drive home a point.

Thankfully, Afterparty sticks mostly to unpacking its characters, world, moral quandaries, and how we may not always see those quandaries for how they define us. When it hits those strides, it's a novel look at what hell might look like for most of us, a vision that turns the concept of eternal damnation into something more palpable and threatening. It fumbles when it reaches outside its comfort zone, and the focus on small moments means it lacks the grandiose ones that make our lives feel more meaningful than they might otherwise be. But again, that's kind of the point: After all, what did we do to deserve anything else?

Afterparty's version of hell is less fire and brimstone and more cocktails and ennui. Sure, its human inhabitants are still damned for eternity and demons still flagellate them for their sins, but that's just the nine-to-five. To escape the drudgery of everlasting torment, demons and humans alike flock to bars and other seedy hangouts between the days' torture. It isn't the flashiest take on the afterlife, but that's kind of the point. Afterparty revels in the small, personal acts of cruelty and kindness that define us, and while the ways it imparts lessons aren't always up to task with the material, it nonetheless treads exciting ground as a story about the work it takes to be a better person.

Developed by Oxenfree creators Night School Studio, Afterparty follows Milo and Lola, a pair of recent college grads who've just found out they face eternal damnation. After some quick onboarding on how they're to be tortured for the rest of eternity, the pair get a break when their turn in line comes just as the workday ends, giving them a night's reprieve. They then learn there's a way out of their predicament: If they can outparty The Prince of Darkness himself, they can return to the world of the living.

Mechanically, Afterparty keeps things simple. As you walk across rich and detailed 3D backgrounds along a 2D plane, most of your interactions involve talking to the right person at the right time. This puts the spotlight on Afterparty's strongest asset: incredibly verisimilar conversations. The dialogue is lifelike in a way you don't find in most games; characters restart their sentences, which often have a fantastically ad-libbed quality to them; the main voice cast features whip-smart performances from Janina Gavankar, Khoi Dao, Ashly Burch, and Dave Fennoy, who all sell their cartoonish characters' maladjustments without making them overbearing.

Afterparty touches on several topics, including the layout, structure, and the underpinnings of its underworld, which pull heavily from the Bible and Paradise Lost. It makes easy connections between businesspeople and demons, or social media platforms and hellscapes, though the comparisons are all coated in a thick veneer of simmering snark and clever turns of phrases that make the comparisons fun, even if they're not the most imaginative ones.

Afterparty is most at home and most cutting when it delves into more intimate topics. Sister May Wormhorn, a personal demon created to harass Milo and Lola as they try to get the approvals necessary to outparty Satan, torments the pair by sifting through their rougher memories. These end up being not one-off, traumatic events, but rather the kinds of smaller slights and moments that bring out their various hangups: Lola's ostracization from her family due to not only her complex family situation, but her skepticism in the face of her sisters' faith; Milo's demanding parents and search for an identity as the child of an immigrant family. These points come through in ways that are direct, but not didactic, and they make for some of the game's strongest moments.

The aloof but clear sense of resignation that permeates throughout hell's inhabitants also sells Afterparty's vision of the underworld not as a prison for the world's most violent criminals, but as the banal hangout spot for those who simply failed to do enough good. In an early exchange, Milo asks Satan what he and Lola could have done to deserve eternal damnation. Satan cuts back with a pithy anecdote about a man who will ask him the same question 50 years from now, after having set out a dress for his girlfriend knowing it would be too revealing to keep her warm in a movie theater. "The real question, Milo, is, what did you do to deserve anything else?" The way Afterparty imparts this lesson both explicitly, in the moral quandaries its explores in its characters, and in its vibrant-but-benumbing clubs, parks, and sights, makes for a powerful atmosphere.

Not every beat lands, however. The main plot, the one about trying to drink Satan under the table, ends in somewhat anticlimactic fashion, and the threads leading up to that finale are underwhelming. That's in part a result of how the quandaries its characters tackle don't have solid, definable solutions that could make for a more exciting conclusion. But it's also because the overarching plot acts as more of a vehicle for characters to vent their frustrations with the world, the underworld, and each other than a real compelling story on its own. The snarky tone also keeps things from getting too dark, and while I appreciated the lighthearted approach, there were times I wish it would have delved into the darker, riskier territory a game set in hell might invite.

Most of Afterparty has you simply taking in and reacting to conversations, but the ways you interact with those conversations break immersion more often than they deepen it. You interact with conversations largely by deciding when to butt in and when to say nothing. You have a limited but generous timer on how long you can respond to something before it's no longer an appropriate response, though I did find a few spots where dialogue would skip inadvertently. The conversation choices are fairly limited, and in the instances where I was able to play through a section of dialogue a second time through, my choices didn't actually alter the plot all that much, which made the conversation more interactive as a way to keep the game from being one long monologue than anything else.

As you hash out the various problems of demons and humans alike, you're going to want to drink. Imbibing one of the underworldly cocktails you find at bars unlocks new dialogue options; chugging a Blue Devil (potato vodka, cigarette butts, the wailing of injured children, and a melted antoninianus coin) will make you more of a rich jerk, while a Grand Exhibitionist (bourbon, mint, sugar, and a frog's vocal sac) will make you more of a "witty vaudevillian." Many of these are for kicks (you can sound like a pirate while making a point if you really want), but often, you'll need them if you want to branch a conversation a different way or build up the courage to perform certain actions to progress.

Afterparty is most at home and most cutting when it delves into more intimate topics.

It's a neat hook that ties into the themes of the story, but it lacks depth as a central conceit. You get a flourish here and there as you affect different octaves or do impressions as you try to get two lovers to get back together, but none of the branches I went down seemed particularly influenced by my drink of choice. On a couple of occasions the game slyly hints that you should replay it to see different effects for all of your choices, but never really earns it. It highlights the larger choices you make, such as whether you turn in one of two suspects who may be a human sneaking into hell for the fun of it, in review sessions with Wormhorn (who belittles you regardless of what you pick). But aside from one major choice, I wasn't too compelled to see other ways situations could have happened.

Beyond that, Afterparty is fairly straightforward; its puzzles are barebones (the most complicated one involved talking someone into giving me their trenchcoat so Milo and Lola could sneak into a club), and most of the drinking and club mini-games that pop up when it's time to earn a demon's approval are disappointing. That Afterparty keeps its interactions light is mostly to its benefit, but when it tries for something else, it doesn't offer the kinds of powerful moments that come from a game's mechanics and story working together to drive home a point.

Thankfully, Afterparty sticks mostly to unpacking its characters, world, moral quandaries, and how we may not always see those quandaries for how they define us. When it hits those strides, it's a novel look at what hell might look like for most of us, a vision that turns the concept of eternal damnation into something more palpable and threatening. It fumbles when it reaches outside its comfort zone, and the focus on small moments means it lacks the grandiose ones that make our lives feel more meaningful than they might otherwise be. But again, that's kind of the point: After all, what did we do to deserve anything else?

Game of Thrones creators/showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff sat for a Q&A session at the Austin Film Festival this weekend, revealing, according to some who were live-tweeting the event, that they didn't place any particular weight to fan feedback or criticisms throughout their journey making the series.

As documented by Needle and Pen on Twitter, Weiss didn't see the value of considering other people’s reactions.

Were you listening to the feedback to your fans as things went along?

Dan: “We really did not.”

Dan doesn’t see the value of considering other people’s reactions.

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It was another landmark week for Todd Phillips' Joker, as not only did the it become the number one R-rated film of all time, but it also eked out a win over Maleficent: Mistress of Evil to once again rule the box office.

In a close race, per Variety, Joker brought in an estimated $18.9 million while the Maleficent sequel scooped up $18.5 million. Again, this is a tight margin so the rankings could change by tomorrow.

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Blizzard will reveal new details about the next iteration of Overwatch at BlizzCon next week, according to a report from ESPN. “Overwatch 2” will feature a new logo for the franchise, new game modes, maps, heroes, PvE features, and seemingly revised hero abilities for that PvE experience. ESPN obtained the information via a source at BlizzCon as well as a training document for the event.

The new logo sports the same circular design as the original Overwatch logo, but with an orange “2” added to its right side.

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