Afterlyft: One Helluva Ride by Nyla J

NOTICE OF EMPLOYEE PROBATION
Your recent performance at Heaven’s Immigration Center has fallen below standards. As a result, your position is under review. During your probationary period, you have been reassigned to a new role to demonstrate your competence.
ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION
You have been contracted to serve as a driver for Afterlyft, a luxury transport service delivering recently deceased clients to the Gates of Hell.
Officially, your task is simple: ensure a smooth and timely ride.
Unofficially, your real assignment is to reform these often self-centered, high-profile souls before arrival. Heaven’s got a redemption quota to fill—and, frankly, we need to keep our government funding. No pressure.
PLEASE NOTE: failure to improve will result in immediate termination and—unfortunately—eternal damnation. Have a blessed day!

| Link | https://shortstoryshort.itch.io/afterlyft |
| Link | https://shortstoryshort.itch.io/afterlyft |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/afterlyft-one-helluva-ride |
Ratings
| Overall | 440th | 3.455⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 399th | 3.31⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 253th | 3.476⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 648th | 3.143⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 284th | 3.905⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 247th | 3.525⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 115th | 3.81⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 282th | 3.738⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 9🗳️ | 17🗨️ |
The car handling is really fun!
The volume slider doesn't work.
It's a bit annoying that you can't make the dialogues go faster.
Sometimes the dialogue box blocks the speedometer.
Why can the police run over pedestrians with impunity, but I can't?))))
p.s.
I never did manage to save up for that college((
p.p.s.
I'm a pretty lousy taxi driver, of course))

Making the text word bubble grow taller over time to fit added text is clever.
When the gameplay started I felt intimidated with the green bar going down, conversation bubbles to read, trying to glance at my surroundings, and understand what the choice bubbles meant and had to use them. Maybe an extra step for turning the key to start the ignition or something would help for easing into seeing the scenery before adding in the timers and choices.
A minor detail with the start menu. It might be challenging to do for this game since the starting screen is balanced to fit 4 buttons at the bottom, yet I recommend hiding the Quit button from web builds. Otherwise clicking it makes the game look like it freezed until the browser is refreshed.
Having a speed limit without a moving spedometer was puzzling to figure out. The downside was funny though, I liked the contrast between the urgent siren, the fear of being caught, and the silliness of buildings flying away then regenerating. Later I found out how to unlock it, but the police still felt somewhat random or hard to not trigger by going slower.
For balance, I think switching the first 2 characters might help ease into the gameplay, having someone who talks less while figuring out how to drive.
Lastly, I don't think the game's reset is finished. The 2nd playthrough my passenger was silent instead of verbose, and the 3rd playthrough my vehicle turned blue in a photo-negative sort of way. Running into someone led me to almost instantly lose to fix colors. The 4th playthrough seemed similar to the second, with upgrades persisting through runs.
Overall very interesting, the story elements seem to fit well together. The gameplay feels connected, but having so many distractions of text, phone, pedestrians, speed limits, turns, plus an invincible car makes the game challenging to learn in a way that almost seems like a 2nd, intentional story about distracted driving.