After man

I'm just going to outright say it.

Before reading any further in this review, before skimming the comments thread, before doing any research at all on this game, you should play it. So much of this game's experience revolves around going into it blind that I would be doing a you disservice if I didn't give you the chance to play it first.

Still reading?

Okay.

After Man self-describes as a "sci-fi/horror exploration game", and this is pretty much dead on. The bulk of its gameplay is standard adventure game fare (collecting keycards, solving puzzles, navigating a maze,) but it deviates from the formula in very welcome ways.

After Man is about atmosphere. It mixes a haunting, ambient soundtrack with (mostly) lavish mapping. It knows exactly the right buttons to push to unsettle or to soothe you. When you come up for air after a session of playing it, you feel profoundly different from when you sat down.

After Man will also not hesitate to kill you. The absolute lethality of the title took me completely by surprise the first time it happened. For about the first half an hour of gameplay, you encounter nothing more threatening than a supply crate. This is deliberate. The game is setting you up. When the 'horror' part of the game's description does show, it shows up in force.

After Man does have a good sense of balance, however. It is not a Dragon's Lair, where everything intends to kill you at the soonest possible opportunity. AM makes it very clear when you are being threatened versus when you are safe, and there are no lurking instadeaths anywhere in the gameplay experience.

Like Myst, After Man does neither hand-holding nor excessive world-building. Most of the game takes place in very sparse environments, and most of the objects in it only give you text when you interact with them. There are a few pickups, and there is exactly one puzzle that consists of more than just finding your way between rooms, but this emptiness only reinforces the atmosphere. In many ways, After Man is about being alone.

Plotwise, AM is a mixed bag. It has some excellent lines, although you have to go hunting for them, and conceptually, it's very striking. On the other hand, it suffers from some really intrusive narration in places like the ending where the game works perfectly well without words. AM is neither an overly story-intensive game, nor a completely plot-free experience. It gives the player a lot to chew over, but does this by showing instead of telling.

Visually, AM is utterly gorgeous, but it won't show you this at first. You have to work for it. For whatever reason, neither the mapping nor the spriting in the first few minutes of gameplay is anything to write home about, but they both get exponentially better as time goes on. As a result, the first ten or so minutes are something to slog through, with the eventual reward being the rest of the game.

Speaking of duration, AM is somewhat short. It hits the end of its narrative arc about an hour and a half in (and without backtracking, this would be considerably shorter.) While it's not quite short enough to be a lunch break game, it is something you could conceivably devote an afternoon to and be done with.

To make up for its length, After Man features three branch endings, each one with about fifteen minutes of distinct gameplay included as part of it. The mapping in each of these endings was so beautiful that I didn't care that they were low-interactivity. I didn't care if my sprite moved like he was jogging through a molasses vat. I just wanted to experience more of them.

After Man does have some minor aesthetic hang-ups. The intro to the game was ungodly long, and didn't have much in it to keep the player interested. There may also be an unwinnable state that can be obtained by failing to flip switches fast enough.

If you're prepared to fight through a slow start, After Man is extremely rewarding. It is by turns pensive, terrifying, tragic, and reverent. If you have a few hours to kill and would like to see someone completely surpassing the limits of their game maker, you could do worse than giving After Man a try.

Reasons to Play:

-Music is wonderfully atmospheric.

-Art is delightfully creepy.

-Game does not dick around with deciding whether to murder you or not.

-Excellent spriting.

-Writing is cold and spare, but clever and appropriate.

-Conceptual horror and atmospheric horror, perfectly suited to the concept and medium.

-Second game hiding inside the first game.

-Branching endings, each with a different character, setting, and gameplay.

Reasons to Ignore:

-Intro sequence extremely long with not much going on. Could really use some dialog displaying during the long interstellar jaunt.

-Long corridors, lots of backtracking, medium walkspeed.

-Backgrounds sometimes too stark, needing some kind of visual filler.

-Unwinnable states appear to be possible.

-Gameplay never explained.

Bugs and Minor Issues

No longer present. Fixed sometime after the initial posting of this review.