There was a moment during my hands-on preview of After Us when I was reminded of Pixar’s WALL-E. Those early moments on the future, ruined earth that sees WALL-E building skyscrapers of garbage as he goes about his business, what he was programmed to do, as the last functioning robot. The opening hour or so of After Us seems like an homage to that film, albeit one viewed through a very different lens.
After Us is also set on a future, ruined earth but there are no cute robots to save us. Humanity is gone, wiped from existence by greed and pollution. So too have all the animals become extinct. The world is desolate, corrupted and broken.
As Gaia, the spirit of Life, players venture out from the Ark, a safe haven for the last remaining vestiges of life on Earth, to revive the planet and return it to its once beautiful state.
After Us
After Us is primarily a 3D platformer, stripped back to basics. Gaia can run, jump, double jump, glide, dash, wall run and grind along wires. The main aim of After Us is to explore the world, collect spirits and return them to the ark in order to, essentially, reboot Planet Earth. Movement is fast and fluid and feels like what I imagine a game created by the unholy union of ICO and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time would. Things start out slowly enough as you gradually unlock abilities but after the first hour, you’re able to combine Gaia’s moveset in all manner of interesting ways.
It makes exploring the decrepit remains of Earth all the more enjoyable too. Taking a running leap, only to dash across a gap, run up a wall and grind a wire across a chasm all happen in the blink of an eye. While it’s not all that difficult to learn or even master After Us’ controls, it’s nonetheless, incredibly satisfying to nail a ‘line’.
Exploring the world of After Us is not just satisfying in terms of gameplay though. Visually, After Us is a delight. The opening levels are set within a long-dead city, with dust-covered high-rises, a sweeping palette of greys and browns and yet, patches of colour and life. None so bright as Gaia herself, a luminescent figure who leaves trails of plants and life wherever she goes. Think the deer god from Princess Mononoke.
Alongside exploration, there is some…combat, I guess you’d call it. Roaming throughout the world of After Us are beings known as the Devourers. In another callback to WALL-E, the Devourers are obese, gross caricatures of human beings who seek out life to consume it. Endlessly consuming, the Devourers are an easy replacement for humans. As part of Gaia’s arsenal, she can charge her life force and release it to temporarily knock the Devourers back; and create a bloom of plants and flowers too.
Gaia can also fire her ‘heart’ to knock the thick, oily armour from the Devourers. Once free from it, the Devourer’s heart is exposed and can be cleansed by Gaia, sending these hulking, melting people off to the great beyond. Doing so occasionally unlocks a memory that gradually reveals the decline of this world and the people who lived in it.
Gaia can sing to release a kaleidoscope of butterflies that fly towards memories and lost spirits to collect. The more spirits you collect, the more the world is inhabited by ghostly apparitions of animals you can both greet and, sometimes, pat.
Devourers aren’t the only things to be wary of in After Us. To funnel you in, generally, the right direction, much of the environment is flooded by thick, oily goop with tendril-like arms that grasp for you when you get too close. Should Gaia touch this goop, for even a second, it’s game over. Thankfully, dying just means a quick reset and try again. It has an almost Limbo sensibility, in the loop of trying and dying and trying again.
In my hands-on with the early few hours of After Us, I did find myself getting a little lost or stuck a couple of times. I can’t say if this is due to the colour palette, lack of visual clues or that I’m colour-blind but there were a number of occasions where it took me a little longer than it should have to find my way forward. Hopefully, some tweaks to the pathfinding or some subtle visual clues will remove this issue for me in the full release.
After Us feels as though it has the potential to tell an incredibly powerful story in a simple, yet effective package. I thoroughly enjoyed my hands-on time and can’t wait to dive back into the full release, wretched, inhospitable Earth be damned.
After Us was previewed on PC.
