Until Then: Afterimages & Maseylia Guide – Chapter 1 Walkthrough + Starter Tips

If you are picking up both Until Then: Afterimages and Maseylia: Echoes of the Past on Steam, the opening hours ask very different things of you. Afterimages drops you back into Sofia’s life in the Philippines with a flood of interactive objects, social media apps, and cooking mini-games that can stall the narrative if you treat everything as mandatory. Maseylia drops you into a sparse 3D metroidvania where one wrong purchase or reckless fight can set you back more than a death. This guide gives you a clean, no-friction route through Afterimages Chapter 1 and a survival blueprint for Maseylia’s earliest loop so you always know what actually moves progress forward.

Until Then: Afterimages – Chapter 1 Efficient Route

Chapter 1 of the DLC is built around Sofia’s return and her conversations with Celest, Alissa, and the team at Mendoza & Co. Law. The game layers optional phone scrolling, social media activities, and environmental stalls on top of that spine. Those extras add atmosphere, but none of them gate the next story beat.

Controls and Movement

Before you start chasing objectives, lock in the inputs. On keyboard, use A / D or the Left / Right Arrow keys to move, and press E or Space to interact. On controller, move with the Left Stick and interact with A on Xbox or Cross on PlayStation. The controls are lightweight; the only thing that slows you down is treating every background object as a required interaction.

The Critical Path

Start the chapter and move toward the first story marker. Speak with Celest; her dialogue triggers the appearance of Alissa in the same district. After that exchange, the waypoint shifts toward Mendoza & Co. Law. Enter the offices and complete the interaction there. This is the largest single beat in the chapter and pushes the narrative into its next phase. If you have spoken to both Celest and Alissa and still see no prompt to enter the law offices, walk close enough to the door for the interaction icon to appear.

Cooking and Baking Mini-Games

Midway through the chapter you will encounter a cooking sequence that includes a timed cupcake element. These sections are QTE-style tasks: watch for the on-screen button prompt and confirm within the window. The timing is forgiving, but hesitation costs more than a slightly imperfect input. Complete the sequence and exit; the chapter proceeds on completion, not on your score. Do not restart the mini-game trying to perfect it unless you are chasing an achievement. The fastest way through is to treat it as a brief gate rather than a scoring challenge.

Optional Traps to Avoid

The smartphone is the biggest source of player stall in Chapter 1. You can open it, scroll feeds, and reply to threads, but none of that is required to advance. If you want to stay in character without bleeding time, glance at the phone once and then ignore it. The same rule applies to environmental stalls and non-story NPC chatter. They are safe to skip unless you are hunting for world-building.

Maseylia: Echoes of the Past – Starter Survival Plan

Maseylia: Echoes of the Past is a 3D metroidvania where your early decisions determine how quickly the world opens up. Health is tight, enemies are aggressive, and the map must be purchased. The goal of the first hour is to secure navigation, establish a safe combat rhythm, and funnel your limited Gold into permanent tools rather than disposable bandages.

First Priority: Buy the Map

Near one of the earliest save points you will find a vendor who sells the map. This should be your first major purchase. Without it, corridors look identical and backtracking becomes a resource drain. Collect every loose Gold cache in the immediate starting zone before you buy, then return to the vendor. Once the map is active, you can see which passages are dead ends and which lead to progression items. Do not push into unmapped territory until you have this; blind corners often hide enemy clusters that punish wandering.

Combat: Lock-On and Strafe

Your health bar in the opening hours is too small to trade hits. Enter every fight with the lock-on active and strafe around the enemy using your movement inputs. On controller, hold lock-on and circle with the Left Stick; on keyboard, use your directional keys while maintaining spacing. Wait for the attack animation to finish, then land one or two hits and reset. Button-mashing will burn through your healing items before you reach the next save point. If you are struggling with a specific encounter, lure enemies back toward a cleared area where you have room to circle without drawing additional mobs.

Gold and Resource Management

After the map, spend Gold on permanent upgrades-health pool expansions, weapon damage, or ability slots-before you stockpile consumables. Healing items are tempting, but save points restore your health for free. The smarter loop is to clear a local sector, return to the save point to heal and bank progress, then spend surplus Gold on upgrades before pushing deeper. If you die, you respawn at the last save point and enemies reset, which means you can farm nearby low-risk mobs for Gold, but it also means you should never carry an unspent fortune into unknown territory.

Recommended Early Route

Spawn, loot the immediate area for Gold, buy the map from the first vendor, unlock the adjacent sector on your map, clear its enemies from the perimeter inward, and return to the save point. Repeat this bootstrap loop rather than sprinting toward bosses or distant markers. The first few hours are about upgrading your toolkit until the world becomes survivable, not about rushing the critical path.

To keep your session efficient: in Afterimages, speak to Celest and Alissa, enter Mendoza & Co. Law, treat the cooking QTEs as quick gates, and skip the phone. In Maseylia, buy the map immediately, strafe with lock-on, and spend Gold on permanent upgrades before consumables. Both games reward knowing what actually advances the state, and once you strip away the optional friction, the opening hours become a much smoother ride.