After Us Reviews
Ultimately, the new game by Piccolo Studio, after the excellent Arise: A Simple Story, is another gem that could delight fans of platform adventures, especially if sensitive to the passionate environmental message that the title tries to convey for about 6/7 hours necessary for its completion.
Review in Italian | Read full review
After Us is a pure 3D platform game that offers us a devastated world where animals have become extinct. Your goal is simple, to free the spirits of this gloomy world and return the beauty that characterized the Earth. To do this you will have to go through a lot of enemies and areas that seem unreachable, so you will have to use all the skills that are in your hand to fulfill your objective.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
After Us is a sombre, succinct and surreal adventure with a compelling and emotional tale of sacrifice and healing, tied together by simple platforming gameplay that evolves with each distinct and beautiful new environment. Some control complaints and unnecessary combat aside, it's a memorable journey worth taking.
After Us from developer Piccolo is an interesting title. It tries to create a Journey-like inspiring adventure through gigantic worlds and simplistic controls. Most of what it does works well, especially with its narrative, though the mechanics from its gameplay design sometimes fight against story progression and player engagement. The game can create some frustration with the camera and controls but wins more than it loses.
For better and worse, After Us is yet another beautiful but otherwise boring and overly artistic game that does very little to advance the medium.
Even with the controller rage at times, I still enjoyed After Us and it's easily one of the most original games of 2023. It's emotional, engaging and more importantly plays well on the PlayStation 5 with the DualSense controller. Sure it's a platformer, however with the strong narrative behind it, After Us is not just a game but also an experience… just be warned it comes with a healthy dose of gaming frustration.
Compared to Arise: a Simple Story, After Us represents an evolution. Despite that, the game fails to accomplish its mission and remains a step back from the modern games standards.
Review in Italian | Read full review
After Us combines solid platforming with a wonderfully realized post-apocalyptic vision of over-consumption. Even if Memories feel like a missed opportunity, the overall narrative and gameplay make it a worthwhile trip into a morbid future.
There's a fascinating game hiding in After Us. The melancholy tale of resurrecting a desolate Earth makes for an interesting premise, but it isn't told in a way to make you care much about it. The platforming generates some good moments, but it is also clunky in places due to the physics and lack of explanation in the tutorial. The combat is rather unnecessary and unexciting, but it is functional, while the presentation remains fetching. Patches are still being created to tweak the game, and there is some potential to fix the technical issues experienced in the early portion of this playthrough. For now, it isn't a game that you need to seek out and play if there are other options to tackle.
A surreal but gorgeous journey through a post-human world
Set in a world that died, After Us is a great example of an industrial apocalypse story done correctly - standing strong in its story, visuals, and ambiance that breath new life into the genre.
With After Us, Piccolo Studio presents platform gameplay with many alternatives, set in a unique version of a desolate world. That's enough for After Us to be considered a good game. But in reality it is more than that. After Us is also a life lesson.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
After Us is a beautiful game with a strong story, but unfortunately it also includes some not great action elements and platforming. It doesn't spoil the overall experience too much, though.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
The perfect proof that the Spanish video game industry has a bright future. With excellent art direction and scenarios, the game seeks to give us a wake-up call to take care of our planet and ourselves, although perhaps its formula ends up being a bit repetitive.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
There are beautiful moments in After Us worth seeing, but they’re buried in poorly directed levels featuring merely adequate gameplay. There’s not enough to consistently grab onto here to really hook most players. After Us has a lot in common with Piccolo Studios’ last narrative platformer but ultimately doesn’t offer the charm or consistently moving story that made that game so memorable.
After Us is one of those rare masterpiece level games that need to be experienced, with an incredibly touching story, amazing gameplay and drool-worthy music to go with it all, you might come for one thing but you’ll likely stay for it all or maybe just to see the story through to the end. After Us has nearly endless layers underneath the overall design, but going deeper is what makes every second spent playing the game so much more rewarding.
After Us is a very strong title that is visually beautiful with an amazing atmosphere created by the coordination of each element of the game put together. While some platform elements can be a little frustrating, the combat is a very fun part of the game that allows the size of the playable character to enhance the creepier aspects of the game.
After Us is a game with beautiful environment. The game is very relaxing, but feels very empty and aimless at times. It's an okay-ish platformer.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
Piccolo Studio recreates an "author's game"
Review in Spanish | Read full review
A platformer that's hampered by it's focus on telling a tale of an ecological drama. The enormous environments are widely different, but are all dark an gloomy, while protagonist Gaia can temporarily bring brightness. Gameplay is diverse, even though Gaia could really benefit from the ability to shy away from edges, making the platforming more difficult than neccessary. There is a great game here, but it isn't allowed to shine due to the unrelenting desire to get the ecological story across.
Review in Dutch | Read full review