Afterlife Empire

While this was fun for a minute, it never felt finished, and the lack of communication from the devs did not help the situation.

Game never felt finished. Menu system terrible, prone to crashing, and worst of all, gameplay quickly gets repetitive after the hour mark.

The game is good in theory and unrefined in practice. Not bad for a highschool kid's senior year project. A bit more work and it'd be pretty legit.

Update: Turns out this is Autobotika's fault. Nice job screwing this one up and abandoning it guys. Condolences to Danielle Maiorino who has taken some of the blame.

Basically a fun game and a nice idea, but with problems, which are needed to be fixed.

Pro:
+ funny idea
+ many objects to model the house
+ the futher u go the more diffrent kind of characters will visite ur house


Con:
- often stops working (about every 30min.)
- when in building mode u cant move the screen around, so u need to leave, reposition it and then reenter the mode
- cant use old scares after gaining a new one
- cant mute game in main menu
- cant move items once placed or rotate them

Except for the crashing, its not to bad, but there are still many things disturbing the gameplay. Maybe the bugs and little problems are going to be patched sometime in the future. But at the moment its not the money worth.

I'm really rather sad that this game never got to go further.
Unfortunately, it still feels very alpha. It's a cute game, I like it, and I enjoyed playing it. However, it's no longer a game I have much interest in.
I absolutely do recommend it, but expect the game to crash, for there to be silly glitches, and to eventually stop playing it all together.

It feels like the biggest issue here was the fact that they got a lot of hate for something as stupid as where money went based on a public voting system. It seemed to discourage the devs, who, quite frankly, were doing a damned good job. If people judged the game and only the game, this would have gone a lot further.

So, for $5, you get a few hours of fun gameplay, maybe some more if you get really into it. You'll probably be like me and wish that the devs and publishers had the will to do more.
Maybe one day they'll pick this back up for an update or two, if only to humor people like me.

This game was incredibly confusing to me in the beginning, mainly because the tutorial glitched out. I was left on my own to figure out how to spend points, make my house, and scare people.

After 3 tries I finally got the tutorial to work to the point where it told me how to build rooms, this was incredibly helpful and I advanced to round 3 in that run. Then the game froze; music still worked but everything was frozen. I shut it down and restarted my save from just after round 1. Now everytime I load that file it freezes in less than a minute.

In order to play the game more I will have to start a new game, trudge through all the tutorial text again (or miss any helpful bonus (like a new room) that I recieved in it, and pray that it doesn't freeze like the last one. At this point, I am just trying to complete the achievements but I don't even know if that's possible anymore.

Overall?:
+Great game. It's a unique concept and the visuals are cute as well. It has the potential to be interesting and fun.

-The controls are horrible. Everytime I have to click on the shop my camera moves and I had to figure out how to move in in the pause screen. Let me explain, when you are in "ghost mode," which is when you scare people and watch people get scared by your traps, you move the camera (which does not rotate) by dragging your mouse to the edge of the screen. When you are in shop/edit mode, which is when you click on the shop to buy/place anything, you have to hold down the right mouse button and drag the screen. Because this was so different from "ghost mode" it took me quite a while to figure out.

-Crashes and corrupted save files. I already explained this but I can no longer access my save.

-Reptetive. Every unique character, such as "Exorcist" "Police Officer" or "Girl Teen," has the same look and sayings as the multiple copies running around. It gets a bit tiring after a while. I can't say that there isn't more variety in late game, as I am unable to get there, but I would like to see more variety in the little snippets of text if nothing else.

Until the bugs are fixed I cannot reccomend this game.

Game is basically unplayable. The menu is bugged to the point where you can't even save a game, as the save and quit game buttons are overlayed on top of the rest of the menu.

This is bad enough, but with the game crashing after 15-20 minutes of gameplay, there is no point in restarting the game over and over.

I want to support TFYC and /v/, i really REALLY do.... but i just can't Bring myself to like this. Between the boring and monotinous tutorial WHICH BROKE ON ME TWICE and didn't let me play the game, the buggy gameplay that kept telling me cops and bulldozers were coming when they never did, a game that didn't save when i clearly went to save, and when i finally did get a game to save, trying to load the file actually crashed my entire game. This had so much potential but it just didn't deliver.

+Neat concept
+Cute, simplistic characters
+Vivan James is best waifu
+Female developers... i guess that's worthy mentioning?

-Buggy, broken, and unoptimised
-Horrible control scheme with buttons too spread out
-Can't scroll the screen in building mode
-Exorcists spawn way too often
-very little options for props and traps with no explination to what the wrench/pencil icon means
-Windowed resolution and sound options reset every time you restart the game.
-Looks like it was developed for mobile
-crashes for no reason

2/10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msk_Lnuhv8s

Bugs, glitches and a rather unintuitive UI (no tooltips, or ways to check current objectives) mar this game. It's very clear that this game could've done with a few more weeks of polishing. However, the basic concept is pretty fun. It's very similar to Ghost Master, where you scare the inhabitants and or visitors of your home, except that game is a tad more indepth. Considering this is a first attempt from The Fine Young Capitalists, don't expect any panty droppers... just a simple, fun game where you scare the piss out of unsuspecting people looking for a thrill. I think my favorite part of the game is the varied number of characters, their reactions and the character models themselves. A very interesting artstyle to say the least. All in all, it's worth 5 bucks and it makes for a passable first outing. Can't wait to see what else comes from this company.
Impressions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoTheNlPOjA

Oh man, I can't stop giggling and snickering while playing this game! Yes, there are a few bugs here and there and press ESC to get rid of the tutorial ... BUT IT'S JUST SO MUCH FUN! I love scaring away the grannies heh ... back to spooking! For $5, you can't go wrong here!

Very decent game in the vein of RollercoasterTycoon/RestaurantCity. If you enjoy casual games that get harder as it progresses then you'll like this game. It has it's bugs but nothing game breaking. Afterlife Empire captures everything that is addictive about facebook games back in the day without the waiting and microtransactions. Looking foward for some updates.










You kill one person and everyone loses the minds and sends the bulldozers.

This isn't the deepest or most complex game in the world, and if you're the kind of person to focus on the aesthetics of a creepy haunted house then this game doesn't really provide that very well. But those are really the only flaws, and the game isn't really an ultra-deep-sim in the first place so they're forgivable.

The game is inexpensive, and also very fun - the basic gameplay is simple but addictive. The balancing act of making enough "scare energy" (i.e. Health + Cash) without exceeding a certain level of "awareness" is easily understood yet compelling. The game slowly ramps up the complexity as you play, so you never feel overloaded.

The graphics have a somewhat cute art style which helps the light-hearted "Addams Family" atmosphere, which is complemented nicely by the (admittedly a touch repetitive) soundtrack.

So overall, the game is fun, and provides good entertainment value. It isn't the deepest game ever but many players of a huge variety of age groups will be able to enjoy it. The Devs plan on adding achievements, and I hope they add trading cards too.

PROS
+ Fun and addictive basic gameplay
+ Cutesy atmosphere that works well with the morbid theme
+ Good value for money and most of the profits go to fighting cancer

CONS
- Not exactly deep

OVERALL
An enjoyable game that will be good fun for a huge variety of players. If you like games like Dungeon Keeper or Theme Hospital, you'll like this.

If this game cost more I wouldn't recommend it. This game is lacking some polish. The potential is really great. There is a lot of fun to be had and I am sure this game will have some interesting mods and polish to look forward to. In its current state and for its price I was having a lot of fun. It got pretty intense and I was really enjoying it. So, I would recommend this game now and in the future I would probably recommend it even more.

Not bad.
The drama surrounding its development aside, five bucks is a great price for what you get.

It looks pretty good, a few technical hiccups, but nothing major so far.

-sometimes traps trigger through walls
-the screen scrolls when mousing over buttons on the right. A bit annoying.
-lack of info on what all the icons mean/what they do
? can you rotate items?
+nice art
+fast paced
+funny text
+large amount of characters
+/? mod support seems interesting if people are willing.

All in all, an innocent, simple game that somehow set the internet on fire.

I haven't seen Vivian yet, but I'm sure she's great.

I had a lot of problems with this game unfortunately and really wanted to like it. It's cute, and I was expecting a theme hospital style game. Unfortunately the tutorial is bugged and the UI hung on me... esc (which exits the tutorial) fixed the issue, but of course then I don't have the tutorial. The options menu was much less than I expected, would be nice to actually have some video options. Tooltips explaining what items do, and explaining the mechanics of the game a bit more would have been nice too. I'd also like to see some actual tasks put into the game, not just some sort of endless survival... though I didn't play much of the game so maybe that comes later. Ultimately the game crashed on me, and coupled with the issues I had I can't recommend the game and even requested a refund. Hopefully they can fix the issues and I might pick it up again.

I have played about 3 hours on the beta for Afterlife Empire, and just over an hour on the steam release now. I really want to say that this is a solid game. While it does have it's flaws, it offers fun gameplay and hours of enjoyment at a very reasonable price.

Pros: A solid sim/strat game that offers good replayability. The audio is decent but not amazing. The graphics are the same. The graphics feel more like they were made for a tablet/mobile phone game than a straight out PC release. But the game runs very smoothly. The only bugs I encountered were during the tutorial. The gameplay is more casual than most of the Theme games, or Sim games, but that actually helps to work in it's favor imo. I could play for 20-30 minutes and feel I accomplished something, or I could play for an hour or more. This is a game that I will recommend to my friends who like sim/strat type games or who like mobile/casual games. For the price it is a serious buy.

Cons: The few bugs I did see were during the tutorial. I could not click on objectives, and had to escape out of the tutorial during the beta (so these bugs MAY be fixed now). This made it harder to get into the game at first. The graphics, for a PC game, could be better. For my taste I would enjoy more RPG elements, i.e. levelups, or stats... but that is my own personal taste.

Warning!: There is some controversy surrounding this game because of the #GamerGate situation. I say forget that crap and give the game a try yourself. For the $5 pricetag you get a lot more out of it then most games that are 15-20 bucks on release. I have enjoyed my time playing this game and I hope you will as well.

Game crashed on me after three rounds.

There are typographical errors, no mouseover effects on menu items, camera moves too quickly in windowed mode, no autosave that I can tell after you successfully complete a night, and unclear tooltips in the prop menu.

This game needed more time to bake in the oven. It's a half-completed mess, especially in the visual department. Although the character models are charming, they don't mesh properly with the environment designs. The font is rendered jaggedly in windowed mode.

Something that personally irritated me in regards to the tree tileset is that they weren't transparent if something was behind them, making it kind of difficult to see if there was someone to scare. Not sure if that was intentional or not, but I find it misguided.

NOTE: If there are updates pending, I'll come back and check out the progress and revise this review as needed.

It has a lot of potential, but definitely could use some tweaking.

Tweaks I'd like to see:

Reduced cooldown time between scare.
Reducing scare meter take away.
Increase scare items pay out.
Reduce scare cost.

I got into the cycle of only being able to scare someone and it would just get give me back what I just lost.

Fun little sandbox to play in. It has a bit of a mobile feel to it, but seems to work very well with no notable bugs. Didn't notice any graphical issues, and the display scales well just by dragging the window to be larger.

Amusing humor in the tutorial writing/explanations of new scares earned as you go. From what I have played so far, it feels easy to make mistakes and get way too ahead of yourself/overwhelmed, but that's what learning is for.

Only real complaint is a lack of tooltips explaining exactly what effect different "awareness" props have.

More Simcity Social than Theme Hospital, it's a good paced haunted house puzzle game. Playing without any technical failures on a mid-to-low level PC with outdated graphics card.