Afterlife Empire

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 Playing without any technical failures on a mid-to-low level PC with outdated graphics card.

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.

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.

I'll start with the bad first even though I do enjoy this game, in the hopes that if there's ever a sequel these can be adressed.
1. Ui, the ui in this game is very archiac and hard to understand at first. In particular manipulating objects. So far I haven't figured out how to rotate or move objects if I even can, all I seem to be able to do is clone and delete objects. It took me a while to figure out how rooms were formed as floors were only an option with no walls like the sims and the first three floor options don't actually make rooms. This also factored into the traps a bit as it seemed like the effective range of traps was only revealed to me after I placed them on the map not previewed before, but I could just be being unattentive.
2. The tutorial for me seems to be bugged as I can't control the ghost at all during it forcing me to skip it which if that hadn't happened I think my first pointwouldn't be as big a deal as it was to me.
3.The isometric view means you can't see everything in your rooms effectively, and also you can't place objects right up against the wall closes to you as the spot seems to be obscured, both visually and mechanically you can't interact with it once a wall covers it.
I don't mind the isometric view I just wish I could place items right up to the closest wall so I could have my rooms be symmetrical in some spots.
Finally the resolution options in this game are limited and as I use a normal tv not a Computer monitor with my desktop I couldn't fix the game to work in fullscreen mode making me have to play it in a stretched window mode. It's only a minor complaint but something I felt like noting.
Now with those points out of the way here are the things I liked about the game and why I think it's ultimately still worth playing if it interests you.
I like the aesthetic of the game, especially the ghost himself he's got a cute charm to me the way he giggles and displays different facial expressions throughout gameplay.
There's a surprising variety in the way different humans interact with the house and they're introduced gradually which means you don't get too overwhelemed by them.
The game progresses in sort of mini levels where you have to achieve a size and trap number milestone, to unlock the next set of objects to use in customising as well as more humans with more complex effects on the game.
Your ghost also gains a new scaring ability with each stage progressed into and you can use these at the cost of your resource points to instantly scare any humans in an area of effect around you.
The more scares you pull off in frequent succession the more awareness of your hauntings go's up. With higher awareness more people come to the house both normal people you can scare for points and others like Excorcists Journalists, skeptic bloggers and more that can drain your resources or raise your awareness even more.
So you have to manage having enough awareness to make your haunted house popular, but not too notorious or else the Police investigate the house draining your resources rapidly and leading to an almost guarenteed game over.
The game is surprisingly challenging, if you aren't paying attention you may spend too many resources and find yourself with not enough to keep going as your health and currency are both pulling from the same source. And if you get too carried away with scaring people you might cause one to die of fright sending your awareness meter so high your home will be swarming with cops ending your game very swiftly.
I wasn't expecting this game to be one that required my full attention but it was scanning the map constantly to find certain npcs Iwanted to scare away before they got to my house or to spook a coward for bonus points kept me constantly looking around the map not just idling on my house and overall I felt it was pretty engaging so far. Gonna play more into it and see how much it draws me in.
Sorry for the rambling but I really wanted to get my full thoughts out on this game. It's rough around the edges, especially with Ui and Resolution options, but it's a great foundation and first attempt in my opinion. A sequel maybe that expanded on the tech side of things while addind more content would be fantastic in my eyes.
As for this one it's a pretty nice game, I enjoy it.
Damn I wrote a lot about this game...
*edit* I forgot thist part, If this game is in a genre that's not already your cup of tea, I do not reccomend it except that it is exceptionally cheap. It's a game at the price of a tin of pringles. I wanted to point out that I only recommend this game if you are already interested by its core mechanics. Otherwise the poor Ui and lack of direction may only be frustrating to you.

I enjoy Afterlife Empire. It's a cute management-style game with the unique idea of managing your own haunted house. It took me around half an hour to fully understand the controls, status bars, and how to properly keep my house running, but once I understood it all it was a blast! There are a few minor bugs that still need to be ironed out, but for $5, I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a neat little game to pass the time with. The profits go to charity too!

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.