Until Then: Afterimages DLC Lands Today, Two Years After the Original Broke Hearts
Polychroma's Filipino narrative adventure returns with two new chapters following Mark and Sofia. Here is what Afterimages adds, where to play it, and whether it's worth picking back up.
Two years ago, a small studio in Manila put out a game that left a lot of players quietly wrecked at 2am. Today it asks for a few more hours.
Until Then: Afterimages launches on June 18 across PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch. It is a paid story expansion for Until Then, the narrative adventure from Filipino developer Polychroma Games, and it arrives one week before the base game’s second anniversary on June 25.
If you missed the original, here is the short version. Until Then is set in an alternate-timeline Philippines and follows Mark, a high school student whose ordinary life starts coming apart after a chance encounter. It is a slice-of-life story wrapped around a quiet supernatural mystery, told through chat threads, train rides and the small humiliations of being a teenager. It currently sits at an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, and its recreation of everyday Filipino life is the thing people keep coming back to praise.
What Afterimages actually adds
This is not a victory-lap cosmetic pack. Afterimages is two new chapters that pick the cast back up after the credits rolled.
- Sofia returns home to memories she left behind, the kind you only confront once you have some distance from them.
- Mark meets a new lover and an old friend, and the two threads do not stay neatly apart.
The expansion also keeps the texture that made the original feel lived-in. There are new minigames, from reading tarot to baking, plus in-game phone apps for dating and short-form video. The first game told half its story through Mark’s phone, and Afterimages leans on that even harder.
None of this is built for spectacle. The base game was about loss as it happens. Afterimages is about the quieter part, the stretch after everyone stops checking in on you. That is much harder to write, and you can feel the team reaching for it.
Why a Filipino indie shipping DLC is a bigger deal than it looks
Most narrative indies are one-and-done. The team ships the story, the story is the product, and everyone moves on. Polychroma choosing to fund and build a full story expansion two years later says the original earned enough goodwill, and enough sales, to justify it. For a studio working out of Southeast Asia, that is not a given.
It also fits a bigger shift. Southeast Asian studios have been getting real showcase space this year, and Until Then keeps proving that a story rooted in one very specific place travels just fine.
Polychroma is celebrating the launch with an in-person event, “Afterimages: the gig + game night,” on June 27 at Sari Sari in Makati City. Wrapping a DLC drop in a live show in your home city is a flex, and an earned one.
Should you jump back in
If Until Then landed for you the first time, this is an easy yes. Two more chapters from the same team, with the same eye for small human detail, is exactly the follow-up this story needed. If you have never played it, start with the base game. Afterimages is an encore, and you’ll want to have heard the first set.
For more on where Until Then sits among this year’s standouts, see our roundup of the best indie games of 2026 so far, and if you want another slice-of-life story that sits on your chest for a while, our coverage of Inkonbini’s launch is a good next stop.
Written by
Stive Godin
Web dev by profession, gamer by passion. Always chasing the next great game and the next personal best in the gym. Building websites, playing games, and lifting heavy things.
