After Us Reviews
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.
Overall, this leaves After Us as a flawed but intriguing 3D platformer. Its moments of brilliance are great to behold, such as its varied, dreadful locales and those moments where its platforming truly clicks. However, its lack of character and story development and its more frustrating sections do mean that it's not a perfect game - but at the very least its heart is in the right place.
After Us manages to deliver an experience that is largely enjoyable despite its flaws. Loose gameplay mechanics, framerate hiccups, and superfluous combat encounters are mostly offset by solid environmental storytelling, a poignant message, fantastic soundtrack work, and almost rock-solid performance and visuals.
After Us is a game of contrasts. A game where the harsh grays and pollution of its desolate landscapes contrast with the gorgeous rays of light and greeneries summoned by its protagonist. Where its unwelcome setting contrasts with its easy-going gameplay loop. It’s also a game where the decent gameplay loop contrasts with its excessively on-the-nose story.
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.
Unreliable performance and some underdeveloped mechanics do hurt the impact and atmosphere of After Us, but its intriguing post-apocalyptic world and satisfying movement still make for a worthy adventure.
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
After Us beats you over the head with paper-thin themes, but between the truly awful platforming and the frustrating level design, it'll be the least of your worries.
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 an adventure that entertains from start to finish and makes you stop and reflect on the serious consequences of climate change. It is a video game that transmits melancholy and beauty in equal parts that will not disappoint those looking for experiences "with soul" similar to Journey.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
After Us is not perfect but it is enjoyable and if you ever wondered what a Journey 2 would look like then check out After Us.
After Us is an artistic, moving, and affecting game about a world transformed by human indifference to nature. It’s a slightly heavy-handed cautionary tale, but a powerful one. As a puzzle platformer, it’s a little less successful, with controls that feel imprecise and levels that need more gameplay variety. After Us has a potent message and offers innocent hope for a planet in trouble.
A chilling fever dream of dystopian hope, After Us takes the mechanics of an atmospheric puzzle-platformer and uses them to create a beautifully unsettling experience that feels a little too real. Its satisfying traversal challenges through gorgeously rendered wastelands provide plenty of engaging gameplay moments for platforming fans, though its relentlessly oppressive environments may prove too harsh for some. Haunting and immersive, but definitely not for the faint of heart.
After Us is an atmospheric platforming adventure that leaves you thinking about the beauty in extinction rather than the horrors. With slick controls, appealing environments to explore and a tranquil nonintrusive soundtrack, fans of titles like Journey will likely enjoy the exploration of a surreal and desolate world of post-human life.
After Us is a decent 3D platformer that captures and holds your attention with the surrealist nature of its world design and compelling environmental storytelling.
After Us is a grim yet hopeful tale of what the future of humanity and our planet looks like, given our current actions. Within its dark moments shine a fantastic platformer that shouldn’t be missed. It not only carries a strong message, but it also shows what is possible for the platformer genre on modern consoles.
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
Published by Private Division, Piccolo’s platformer set in a post-human world is a solid offering and another reminder that indie games can provide well-rounded, memorable experiences. After Us can be completed in about 10 hours, 20 for thorough explorers, and nearly every minute of it will be enjoyable. The visuals are impressive, the gameplay is fun, the levels are varied, and though the story is rather simplistic and a bit vague, it serves its purpose. After Us probably won’t rise to the top for many people, but it definitely won't sink to the bottom either.
With lofty ambitions and some great elements, After Us lets itself down in as many ways as it triumphs. Gorgeous art direction and an admirable anti-pollution message aren't enough to make up for tedious combat, performance issues, and open-ended level design that plays things a little too loose. If you're itching for an experience like this, there are better options out there, at the very least until After Us' performance issues are addressed. There's the core of an incredible experience here, but it's just not ready yet.
After Us has a wordless story that doesn't effectively communicate its environmentalist themes and platforming that frustrates with unreliable controls, but it does look fantastic.