Plenty of video games deal with grief, but few, if any, are memorials for their own creators.
That’s the sad position Afterlove EP finds itself in. The new indie game began its life as the brainchild of Mohammad Fahmi, the creative mind behind Coffee Talk. Fahmi founded a new studio, Pikselnesia, to develop the project and it got some high-profile attention out the gate. Afterlove EP was featured in a Nintendo Indie World Showcase circa 2021, setting it up as a tentpole “Nindie” scheduled to launch in 2022. That creative momentum collided with reality when Fahmi died in 2022 at the age of 32. Since then, Pikselnesia vowed to pick up the pieces and finish the project to honor Fahmi’s memory.
The end result of that work is a raw, tragic work of posthumous art that’s rarely seen in the video game world. Sure, we’ve heard plenty of albums from artists after their deaths, but Afterlove EP is a more direct eulogy. It completes Fahmi’s vision while letting his colleagues work their grief into a story that was already about loss. There’s an undeniable hole in the project’s heart, though, one that can’t be separated from the circumstances around its development.
Set in Jakarta, Afterlove EP is a narrative adventure that centers around Rama, the frontperson of a local Indonesian band trying to make it big. That dream is complicated when Rama’s girlfriend Cinta suddenly dies. Rama disappears for a while, much to the dismay of their bandmates, and tries to resume a normal life while picking up the pieces of a shattered life. If that wasn’t difficult enough, Cinta’s voice remains in Rama’s head, commenting on their every move.
The eight-hour story takes place over a full month as Rama’s band prepares to play a gig despite the tensions between them. Each day, players choose to spend time with different townspeople, from a local record store clerk to a bandmate’s ex, to build out Rama’s relationships. It becomes a juggling act of complex interpersonal relationships with some real consequences for those who don’t split their time accordingly.
All of that leads into a story about grief that’s more nuanced than you might expect. While Afterlove EP has sympathy for Rama, the story isn’t afraid to characterize them as a bit of a jerk. It questions the way that Rama remembers Cinta, squashing their memory down to a narrow one that’s only concerned with how she fit into Rama’s life. It’s an idealized memorial, provoking questions about how we remember those we’ve lost. When does honoring the dead cross the line into self-medication? How do the memorials we build for people transform them into something else entirely?
With that narrative throughline, Afterlove EP is difficult to divorce from the context of its creation. It can be read as a meta-commentary about the developers at Pikselnesia pushing on after Fahmi’s death. In fact, that context is a bit of a necessity, as the game falls apart without it.
Entirely removed from that history, Afterlove EP is a frustrating narrative game at every turn. Its reliance on manga-like still images makes it feel more like I’m seeing the animatics for a game that never came to fruition. Only Cinta’s lines are voice acted (with cloying delivery that could be read as a reflection of Rama’s infantilizing memory of her), but everything else is laid out in text. It contains a recurring music minigame that plays out in rhythmless button matching that rarely matches anything happening in the music. The story is long-winded, stretched thin to stay committed to the 30 day structure. It almost feels unfinished.
That’s where context becomes crucial; all of this feels more meaningful viewed through the lens of a work of art forged from loss. Any perceived “holes” in the project reflect the very real one created by Fahmi’s absence. Afterlove EP almost feels like a game trapped in stasis, forever locked where it was in 2022. It’s a studio stitching together disparate pieces, trying to move on just as Rama struggles to in their story. Like a collection of loose demos salvaged from a lost musician’s tape recorder, it feels like a fuzzed-out sketch of what could have been.
There’s a painful honesty in there, even if it wasn’t the project’s intention. When an unexpected death occurs, it rarely leaves room for closure. I’ve had friends die days into starting college, amid career changes, and in the middle of beating games. No matter how much you do to honor them, even if it’s completing a vision they left behind, that unfinished business always lingers.
Afterlove EP doesn’t try to put makeup over a permanent scar; it wears its imperfections like a badge of honor. It’s a messy, but sincere reflection of the grieving process and all of the ugliness that comes with it. That might make it a difficult game for casual players to connect with, but it’s a tribute that an artist like Mohammad Fahmi deserves.
Afterlove EP launches on February 14 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
