After Us Reviews
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.
After Us combines stunning vistas of environmental decay with a dreamlike flow to its light platforming challenges. Despite some missteps, such as ill-fitting combat, exploring and affecting its world is a gratifying process that comes with a wave of emotional ups and downs.
After Us poses some well-tread but timely questions about our impact on the world and its living things. However, optional discoveries throughout the game suggest that Piccolo is trying to present a slightly more ambivalent take on the subject. Some of that is best left for the player to discover for themselves. I recommend After Us strongly as a piece of visual artistry. 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.
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 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
As a game, After Us can sin of being flat, of lacking some of those playable moments difficult to forget or even of having problems such as a distant camera that hinders the most demanding platforming. But on the other hand, its history, the landscapes it proposes and some emotional sequences will make you remember it for a long time.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
All these factors, combined with a stunning soundtrack that ranges between Vangelis and Nobuo Uematsu, make After Us a must-play game in 2023, and deserves a place on any game of the year list–not just one restricted to indies. For all those moments of satisfaction and glee, you’ll also feel uncomfortable, sad, and maybe even helpless–but again, maybe that’s the point. Sometimes you have to suffer to do the right thing.
After Us serves as a compelling reminder of the far-reaching consequences of environmental neglect. While there are stories to glean through memories, the game is primarily a tactile experience, emphasizing parkour and puzzle-solving over delivering a strong narrative. The game has approachable puzzles and straightforward controls that should be easy for most to pick up. Its engaging gameplay mechanics, stark visuals, and poignant message make for a satisfying puzzle-platformer overall.
The surreal and decadent world of After Us is impressive: although it is not a large-caliber production, the developers of Piccolo Studio have been masters in using the means at their disposal to create impactful visual compositions. The mechanics aren't innovative per se, but the chain of tools made available to the player, combined with a certain freedom granted during exploration, allows the action to settle on a good pace.
Review in Italian | Read full review
After Us demonstrates its strong personality with a title that plays at modifying its world to be more than just a responsive platformer
Review in Spanish | Read full review
After Us is gorgeous and has some important things to say about consumerism, but actually playing it isn't always fantastic.
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.
After Us presents a strong message about planet conservation and wildlife preservation. However, weak gameplay and hollow-level design make the game a running simulator rather than an engaging platformer.
After Us features a sprawling, desolate world painstakingly crafted to show the destruction wrought by human greed, but its camera controls and level design make the platforming awkward and often frustrating.
Piccolo Studios has once again managed to take something dark, desolate, and painful and find the beauty in it. After Us is a haunting tale of humanity's atrocities against the planet that hits closer to home than most people would want to accept. The game's mesmerising imagery haunted me at times and at other times had me in awe with its gorgeous vistas and art direction. It may be a simply platformer but it has a power message that everyone should pay attention to.
Besides being a fun game, After Us also offers a very interesting setting. Some technical problems in controlling Gaia do not negatively affect the experience, making it a recommended game for those who love to visit complex worlds platform after platform.
Review in Italian | Read full review
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 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.
After Us had some lofty goals and it shows but sadly, they didn’t quite reach those highs. Incredible art direction and a dope soundtrack sadly don’t make up for the ‘tacked’ on combat and the very floaty platforming controls. The design choice to make it open world is also a head scratcher because the game absolutely does a poor job of telling players where to go next. I’m left wondering what could have been with After Us, had the combat been taken out I think this would have been a much better adventure.