After Us isn’t your regular end of the world adventure. Mixing a thoughtful tale of renewal with exploration and platforming puzzles, it presents a unique proposition that we got hands on with recently.
The last animals are dead. Deformed tendrils scour the remnants of a listless rock. The vestiges of a doomed civilization are the playground for a new platforming adventure from Private Division and developer Piccolo. Due out on 23 May this eco centric voyage isn’t a follow up to the utterly gorgeous Arise, but it still presents yet another enthralling experience for anybody looking for some more meaning than a traditional hack and slash. Set against the backdrop of global environmental breakdown, players picking up After Us will step out into an abstract world where the lost souls of extinct animals need your help. Between oil-soaked wastelands and scorched valleys, the last hope for life must weave around obstacles and navigate perilous encounters to collect these spirits and bring them back to the safety of an oasis called the Mother’s Ark.
Rather than ape the wistful scenery of other post human scenarios, the immediate aftermath of this meltdown is smothered in its own amalgamation of tar and ooze. An arrangement of hanging structures, disconnected spaces, and the abstract remains of a petrified population help make the stage for this story feel familiar and still very wrong. Comparisons to the likes of Lost Ember and even Nier Automata do have merit as this light touch exploration game drops players into a third person play space decorated in disaster. Rusted cars, black smears of desolation, and a chocking smog cast a haze of brown and black over a range of deserted environments. It is up to you to navigate the derelict highways and take a lonely trudge through what’s left of civilization, without any obvious explanation to hand.
Moving the game’s protagonist, Gaia, through this unnatural backdrop is a simple enough experience. A controller is required for this and allows players to utilize a number of intuitive movement mechanics while Gaia searches for a range of lost spirits. What begins as a straightforward 3D platformer layer in a range of rail riding, wall running, double jumps, dashes and more that adapt and change to the available environment without ever feeling overly complicated. A dynamic set of controls provides a one button approach to most of the n game mechanics, and if you’ve managed to make it through the likes of Sonic Frontiers or the Spyro series, then this expedition into the apocalypse will feel familiar enough.
While movement might not fall far from established norms, this isn’t a dash through Green Hill Zone. The world of After Us is split into a series of themed biomes, each depicting the result of a broken eco system. Within a varying degree of freedom, Gaia can leap, dash, glides, and generally explore the open environment, only curtailed by insurmountable chasms or the clutching tendrils of a deadly ooze. This free form of platforming does have at least a little direction to it. A call and answer singing system provides pointers to a range of trapped and lost spirits which need saving. It isn’t a perfect tool, leaving me a little lost after clearing al the objectives in some zones. It does, however, never leave me Gaia lost for long thanks to solid level design that blocks players from going too far off the beaten path and adequately filters you down an intended path.
This sort of low key interaction is prevalent throughout the game. After us does not provide a dictated diary of events or a quest log to complete. The in-game progression path does not really count as a map, and much of the game is left down to your own interpretation. For anybody that’s a goal focused gamer then that might prove to be frustrating, but that’s simply not the type of game this is. Between this run through the remnants of the world, the aforementioned Ark acts as a player hub. Fast travelling between cleared zones and the Ark allows players to view spirits saved and achieve a sense of progression. These rescued animals, again, don’t come with a tale of woe. They simply spawn into the Ark. This player hub essentially acts as a verdant safe zone that slowly fills with an ethereal ecosystem. It’s a wonderful counterpoint to the less inviting regions of the game but isn’t the only place you’ll see these spirit animals. Along the road, releasing captured animals adds an immediate sense of progression, as hordes of glowing horses race begin racing across the screen and Gaia calls out to swarms of flying fish.
With little in the way of goals and narrative, After Us leans heavily on this otherworldly aesthetic, and its message. Gaia’s abilities allow players to push back pollution, regrow tress, add vines to clamber over, and claw the world back to a more liveable state along the way. The odd appearance of a lumbering bipedal monsters is an obvious nod to human destruction manifest, and the towering oil drills of early levels are a less than subtle hint at the message. All these elements are put in place for players to experience, because After Us is an experience as much as it is a game. This is a chilled-out meditation on what we’re doing to the world, twisted into a competent platforming adventure. The entire game is unlikely to take more than a long day or a couple of afternoons to finish, but it’s an enthralling experience while it lasts. The abstract approach and light touch story telling draws players in, reflecting on their own impact on the world. Eschewing combat for a more thoughtful experience, After Us harkens back to the likes of ABZU and Journey, giving it an appeal if you’re looking to do more than lock and load on a Sunday afternoon. Check out After Us before it comes to PC, PlayStation, and Xbox via the official website.
