After Us is a 2023 video adventure game and the second-ever game from developer Piccolo Studio. In After Us, players embody Gaia and embark on a mission to save and revive the souls of extinct animals while unraveling the tragic events that caused their demise. Players will face dangerous creatures called Devourers while emotional journey, from utilizing Gaia's unique traversal abilities to explore a vibrant world, evade traps, and cleanse the world around her.
In a recent interview, Game ZXC spoke with Alexis Corominas and Jordi Ministral, Co-Game Directors of After Us. In the interview, Corominas and Ministral discussed how After Us came to be and how the unique aspects of the game's world and gameplay were developed. The following transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Can you tell us more about the inspiration behind After Us, and what sets it apart from other adventure games?
Corominas: Arise: A Simple Story, our first game, was about an old man looking back, and for our next game we decided to look ahead instead. We started thinking about legacy: what are we leaving to our children? Then we decided to look even further ahead: what is the legacy we humans are leaving behind? To next generations? To the far future? We then linked that idea with the environmental topics of today and ended up with the contrast of a dead world, once humans have wasted everything, and a small nymph striving to rekindle life.
Could you talk a little about the main character Gaia and her role as a personification image of nature?
Ministral: We call her Gaia, even if her name is not said during the game. Gaia is a universal deity that exists in many cultures and represents life on the planet. She is often portrayed as a female character, and we wanted her to look like a small nymph (anthropomorphic, but not entirely human), with a touch of nature (her dress resembles bark) and long, white, glowing hair. She has the pure emotions of a small kid, but she’s determined.
She is light, agile, and fast. She just flows around. She doesn’t talk, but she sings to discover spirits, and can throw her heart to interact with the world. She can also perform a burst of life that grows vegetation around her, even if temporarily. We were inspired by many movies and characters from popular culture, but we wanted to create something personal and went for a minimalist approach.
How do Gaia's traversal abilities, such as gliding, jumping, and dashing, contribute to the gameplay experience?
Corominas: Gaia is a small character in a huge, menacing world, but we wanted her to feel powerful and dynamic. We designed the traversal skills so they felt good and cool to perform. We wanted players to be able to combine them and explore a big, organic world.
There are no metrics in a generic platforming sense, but different skills that can be combined to achieve everything you will face. This organicity makes the world feel more solid, you might not see overt “design patterns,” and ultimately allows our artists to create a compelling environment in which to play. The border between gameplay and background is intentionally blurred. All the basic traversal skills in the game are familiar to players. It is the way you perform them and the world in which you perform them that create an original experience. On top of that, Gaia has some special skills like throwing her heart or performing a burst of life, that are unique.
Ministral: We want to reach a wide audience, so the platforming shouldn’t be difficult, but at the same time it should allow for a bit of challenge here and there, specifically in moments when we want players to feel under pressure.
Could you elaborate on the special gifts or powers that Gaia possesses that will allow her to fight Devourers and free souls?
Ministral: We wanted combat to feel like an extension of traversal, so you can jump over enemies, round them, dodge them, go through their legs… Gaia’s traversal is very powerful against them, and we encourage players to do that, not just run away from them. Then there are the special skills. Her heart works as a boomerang that you can throw and recall at will. It will interact with the environment in many ways, like switching or activating elements. The burst of life grows different kinds of vegetation around the main character, but it is a temporary power. Both are used in many ways during the adventure.
Corominas: You can use her heart to free animal souls, that you need to find in the world by exploring or solving simple puzzles, and the heart is used as well to fight Devourers. You can shoot and recall your heart to impact them, removing the coat of oil that corrupts them. When all the oil coat is cleaned, they are redeemed. The burst of life can also be used in combat to stun the Devourers, stopping some of their attacks and opening a window to redeem them.
Can you discuss the decision to not include stats or special abilities?
Corominas: We wanted to design emotional rewards instead of mechanical ones. Most of the actions you do in the game are totally optional. You decide to free animal spirits because they deserve it and the world is a beautiful place with them in it – not because you want to progress or improve the character or earn something in exchange. You can grow life at certain locations, but, again, there are no other rewards than the life itself that grows. It was a bold decision, but one that we thought aligned very well with the concept of the game. Though it is not a conventional game, we built the basic experience over small chunks of recognizable “gamey” features such as an enjoyable traversal, ways to interact with the world, and engage enemies. Sometimes the game plays strictly as a platformer, sometimes as a puzzle game, sometimes it is an action game. We wanted to mix genres.
Could you discuss the role of Gaia’s Mother, her rejuvenating voice ability, and Gaia’s cry that can turn everything around her green and help fight off attackers?
Ministral: Mother is a goddess whose only goal is to rekindle life on Earth. She cares for Gaia, and can feel everything she feels, but ultimately Mother uses Gaia for the greater good. It is depicted as a constellation and her main role is to add context to Gaia’s narrative arch, as Gaia has no voice. Also, there’s a contrast between the primal, emotional reactions of Gaia and the cold, analytical behavior of Mother.
Can you describe the landscapes in After Us and how they reflect the natural and industrial world?
Corominas: To us, the world is the main character of the game. We want you to empathize with Gaia, but we intentionally put the camera quite far so the huge, bleak, devastated world could speak to you. It hits you constantly with epic, symbolic landscapes in which you are that tiny speckle of hope thriving to progress. That contrast was central in the development of the look and feel of the game. It is a contrast of light, color, and sizes. The world is huge and Gaia feels small, vulnerable, but determined. Everything was built for the big picture rather than the detail. We wanted to create a “dead museum” feeling in which the player is the only living/moving entity. This dead world is full of symbolism, describing our relationship with nature. Mainly, it is a relation of exploitation, we take everything from nature but don’t give back enough. We wanted this to be very obvious in the world of After Us and to show it bluntly to players.
Ministral: These landscapes have subtle changes when you progress. You can grow some vegetation back and free animal spirits, so you leave behind a better world. It’s not a big change, because that’s what an individual can do, but we wanted players to feel that even those tiny changes are powerful. And to emphasize that, we made them optional. You bring back life to the world because you want to, not because the game forces you to. And there’s a final contrast: beyond all those devastated biomes, there is the Ark, a chill, beautiful garden where all the spirits that you free can wander around. This area celebrates life and your actions in the game, and we wanted it to feel like a magic forest.
How does the game portray the destructive relationships between humans and nature, as well as the contrast between progress, love, and hope?
Ministral: At the beginning of the game and in the hypothetical future that we show, it is obvious that humans have wasted all life on the planet. This is a surreal world, a nightmare that could become real. It’s us humans who have the power to waste all life, hence the title of the game, and the idea of the legacy that we are leaving behind. But we’re not blaming the individuals. As individuals, we all love nature, we don’t know anyone that enjoys destroying a beautiful environment. We destroy them as a side effect of our collective actions, that go beyond our control.
Corominas: We represent humans as agents of destruction but also as victims of themselves that, maybe, deserve redemption. This is one of the aspects of the game that is more apparent towards the end, through the accumulation of scenes and memories that you can unveil. Those memories show that not everything is black and white about humans. There are shades of grey, and the game focuses on that in the long term.
Can you explain the significance of the Devourers in the game and their role?
Ministral: They symbolize humans. At the start of the game, you find them as statues, filling the environments and depicting them in their daily life. Later on, you find them as enemies, covered by a coat of oil that corrupts them. At the start of the game, it is easy to assume that we are blaming humans for everything, but if you explore further and look at all the scenes you start to reveal memories that are hidden around. You will start to see all the grey shades of humans. We are not guilty of everything, we create beautiful poetry and music, we love and care, but at the same time collectively we are agents of destruction. The game explores all these facets and tries to present humans, individually, as agents of hope.
What is the importance of the eight major souls or Vessels in After Us? How do they contribute to the story and gameplay progression?
Corominas: The main goal is to retrieve the life power held in the corpses of 8 extinct animals, that we call vessels, to be able to rekindle life to the world. This is the only action that you are forced to do in the game. To do so, you’ll have to explore a vast world, overcome hazards, light puzzles, and platforming challenges. But except for the first one, you can find them in the order that you want, as they are all equally important. Each time you retrieve Mother’s power, Gaia will wake up in the Ark again. There isn’t a dense plot to unfold, but a series of feelings and revelations. Expect no major cliffhangers or plot twists, it’s not that kind of story.
Can you discuss the rescued animals in the game and how they contribute to the landscape and storyline?
Ministral: There are 100 animal spirits that you can free. When you free a spirit, which is totally optional, instances of that animal will start roaming the world. A world that looked dead and desolated starts to feel alive. And that is your reward, not an extra power, experience points, or items. We don’t trade animal spirits; you save them because you care and the satisfaction you get from saving them is watching them roam the world again.
Corominas: These design decisions reinforce this idea that all animals matter the same, that we are just one of the many animals on this planet. The world is a much more beautiful place with all of them. We call that emotional rewards instead of mechanical ones.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Corominas: We hope that After Us makes an impact on players, to be moved and instill a bit of hope in them.
Ministral: If the game creates a reaction from the players, we are happy. What would be a failure is to leave people indifferent.
After Us is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.