After Us review – Spirited and surprising explorations of an extinct Earth

After Us is a lot more than I expected. A lot more. Coming from Piccolo Studio, the Spanish creators of artful and meditative Arise – A Simple Story, I was anticipating a brief but emotionally potent platforming adventure with visual flair. Similarly quiet and contemplative, After Us oozes a distinct, surrealistic art style, but this indie game also goes big and bold, making some interesting creative choices and giving a surprising amount of control to the player. This isn’t a by-the-book platformer to tick off over a couple of play sessions, although there are times you may wish it was more constrained. More about that in a bit, though.

In After Us, you play as Gaia, a tiny life spirit who leads an idyllic existence in Mother’s Ark, a heavenly enclave for all the energies of the natural world. But once the Earth’s last animals die, it falls to Gaia to venture out over the nightmarish, dead planet and retrieve the creatures’ trapped souls. There are eight desolate zones – such as Suburbia, Power Plant, City, National Park, Ocean and Quarry – for Gaia to cross in order to rescue the eight alpha animal Vessels.

Aiding Gaia in this endeavour are her abilities as a nymph. She can double jump, glide, perform mid-air dashes, run up certain types of wall terrain, and also employ more stage specific actions like surfing power lines, teleporting between TV screens, and catapulting herself off the top of spirit trees. This said, our heroine is perhaps too nimble, as her dashes frequently (and annoyingly) send her flying past her platform target. Fortunately, the game, which has no difficulty settings, is extremely generous with its save points.

In addition to the expected traversal puzzle solving, After Earth also includes its own idiosyncratic form of combat. Evidently representing Gaia’s view of Earth, the game world is studded with grotesque Goya-esque statues of humans at their most unflattering, but these figures are just present for their unnerving effect, standing in for our extinct species. All that really remains now on Earth are Devourers, oil-and trash-coated beings that only know how to consume, and hunger after Gaia’s pure life force.

Any preconceptions that After Earth will be a relaxed, cosy game are shattered when Gaia is mobbed by the Devourers. In these intense moments, Gaia must defeat her enemies by flinging out her heart like a boomerang to redeem them, or keep them at bay with an area effect known as Burst of Life. There’s an art to After Earth’s fights, but also frustration, as Gaia must be facing her target dead-on to be effective. There is no auto-lock or forgiveness in the game’s stiff controller-only aiming. So while you may feel satisfaction when you take down your final foe, it doesn’t feel as exhilarating as when Gaia is riding power lines, for example. It’s more like you survived a back street brawl. Then again, maybe it’s supposed to come across that way.

After Earth is a sombre game overall. Its levels force players to consider the human race’s exploitative and selfish attitudes to the world we live in. Pollution, wastefulness, human-accelerated climate change and the cruelties of industrialised food production all come under the spotlight. However, the game isn’t as consistently bleak as say, Endling – Extinction is Forever, which also explores the battle for survival of the last creatures on a ravaged Earth. Gaia’s Burst of Life can clear oil and bring back plant life. More importantly, while all you need do to finish After Us is free the eight Vessels, there are 100 other lesser spirits to rescue. Once you restore these animals, their glowing ghost forms appear across the wasteland, reintroducing life to the barren terrain. And, yes, you can pet every single one of them. Or take a break from the abstract apocalyptic landscapes and visit the creatures back at the paradisiacal Ark.

If you focus solely on reaching the eight Vessels, you can probably complete After Us somewhere in the eight to ten hour bracket. However, it’s worthwhile embracing the game’s secondary tasks for a more fulfilling experience that also alleviates the dominant feeling of gloom and despair. After Us is a 23GB PC download for a reason. Completionists can relish the challenge of finding all 100 spirits and unlocking all 89 human memories, which will likely take a player across the 15-hour threshold. While its gameplay offerings are pretty straightforward in nature, there’s a lot to do in After Us – and it never feels like unnecessary busywork, as the tasks complement and make sense for the storyline. Plus, thanks to fast travel between Oasis hubs, you can return to areas at any time (including after finishing the main game) to continue your search.

Piecing together memories is especially rewarding, as it introduces relatable human stories to a universe otherwise devoid of us in flesh and blood form. Gaia is interlinked with humanity in some way, and she has to decide whether we are worth a second chance. Assembled, the memories’ illustrated panels present tales that range from sad to triumphant, and even comical. They explain how the world could have reached its ruined state but also still contain decent people just trying to do their best, typically in support of loved ones.

After Us is obviously well thought out. Reflecting this, one of the most pleasing aspects of the game is the elegant pathing of its level design. The game features no HUD, minimap, or obtrusive hint system (how strange these days to play something where the hero won’t stop explaining what they need to do). Players are instead trusted to work out where to go, guided by the strategic placement of visual cues.

The thing is, while I appreciated so much about After Us – access to the communal player Garden on finishing the game is a wonderfully heart-warming and hopeful touch – I can’t say that I really enjoyed it as a whole. Gaia’s has a very limited set of animations to express her emotions during the repetitive cut scenes, which makes her a bit one dimensional.

And with the game’s large scale and scope, there’s a strong sense of sameyness. After freeing the first Vessel, After Us unusually allows players to hunt out the others in mostly any order they wish. That freedom is admirable but it means there is no difficulty curve beyond a certain point; only different challenges. Also, your choices of zone could see you explore dull cityscapes for hours, which quickly becomes tedious. This when there are standout, memorable levels, like the Countryside, which is now an endless garbage dump battered by acid rain. In short, your order choice will likely impact how engaging you find the game, when players could have been guided along a path that maximises visual and emotional impact.

With its heart in the right place, After Us succeeds in its thematic ambitions, and I would recommend it as an indie platformer that artfully pushes its genre in new directions. It just didn’t consistently keep a hold of my heart, which was a little disappointing.

After Us releases today, 23 May for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.