After Us Review – Uncomfortable Truths

Piccolo Studio is a team of developers who are interested in creating artistic, interactive depictions of unpleasant realities. Arise: A Simple Story is a moving and emotional portrayal about death and heartbreak. The story of After Us is more ambitious, as it tells an allegory about the life that will follow humanity. It also explores our complex and sometimes destructive relationship with nature. It leaves the conclusions to be drawn by the player on these subjects. They are heavy handed but impactful. While the adventure to get you there is a traversal-focused one, it has moments of beauty and brilliance but also some frustrations.

In this game, players take control of a young girl that represents the spirit Gaia. She moves around a world left in ruin by mankind’s mishandling. Across an impressive variety of large interconnected stages filled with symbolic representations of nature’s destruction, players leap, sprint, and flit to chase down and recover the spirits of animals driven to extinction by humankind’s arrogance.

After Us’ most memorable elements are these surreal landscapes, filled with towering monuments to consumerism, piles of refuse, and towering human statues in anguish over what they’ve wrought. It was exciting to discover each new place. The discovery of animal spirits continues to fill each area as exploration proceeds. These blue ghosts are the apparitions long dead animals. They’re sad, but also moving.

The gameplay is a bit sloppy. Jumping and fighting the spirits that are consuming humans along the path does not match up with the visual feast. Landings that are floaty or hard to detect are a problem for leaps and traversal. Battles are rare and primitive, with no ability to move or lock on. This results in odd retreats in order to get some distance. It was time to move on from those frustrating moments, and return to exploring.

Many areas have clever new tricks and twists to help keep things interesting. In one ruinous landscape, I was forced to avoid poisonous rain by avoiding covered areas. Then, in another game I was able to teleport from one abandoned TV set to another if the images were similar. These new mechanics require some light puzzle-solving, but solutions are not complex or involved.

Each place that I discovered seemed too long, even though I was captivated by them. After Us would have gained more impact if it had been scaled down in scope and size. The long levels and vaguely ethereal soundtrack can sometimes be soporific. 

The questions posed by After Us are not new, but they’re timely. They ask about how we impact the planet and everything in it. Piccolo may be trying to portray a more ambivalent view of the world through the various optional discoveries that are scattered across the game. The player should be left to explore some of this for himself. After Us is a beautiful piece of art. It’s less successful as an interactive experience, but none of its problems are so glaring that it should dissuade someone from discovering its striking and haunting world.