When a video game becomes a eulogy for its own creator

digitaltrends.com:

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.

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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