At SPIEL ’22, while most of the attention was on newly released games, I spent much of my time focusing on the future — including one in which humans no longer play a role.
After Us is a game by Florian Sirieix and Catch Up Games for 1-6 players that is scheduled to debut at the FIJ 2023 game convention in Cannes before general release in France in March 2023. Licensed versions will likely follow in other languages, but such deals are often worked out at SPIEL itself, so I can say no more about them now.
Here’s a short take on the setting and gameplay:
After Us is a deck-building and resource management game featuring an original and intuitive combo system in which players each lead a tribe of apes. Starting only with tamarinds, they combine their cards each turn to collect resources and gather victory points, attracting new apes into their tribe along the way: powerful gorillas, resourceful orangutans, versatile chimpanzees, and wise mandrills. The first player to obtain 80 points prevails in the race to collective intelligence — and wins the game.
Like many modern family-weight games, gameplay in After Us is mostly solitaire-ish. Each player starts with a deck of eight random tamarinds, and on a turn you draw four of them, arrange them in a line as you choose, then carry out the actions in the completed boxes line by line from left to right.
Cards in play on my second turn
With the cards above, I collected (in total) two batteries, two orange fruit, two blue flowers, one black nut, and 1 point (represented by the lightbulb). Additionally, I had the option of converting certain resources into points. (On later turns, I started stacking the resources I would use on these conversion boxes.) Note that the bottom line of the tamarinds have a half box on the right on the bottom line and nothing on the left. You must acquire better apes to make use of those wasted opportunities.
Oh, and I collect two RAGE from the gorilla. More on that in a bit.
Setting up, although the central decks will all be face down
After everyone has collected and converted, they each choose one of their four discs, then reveal them simultaneously. Each disc shows a reward at top and an associated ape at bottom:
• 2 points and a mandrill (which is linked to the blue flowers)
• 2 batteries and a orangutan (orange)
• 2 RAGE and a gorilla (black)
• A re-use symbol and a chimpanzee
If you choose the re-use symbol, you carry out a completed box in your row once again. If you wish, you can spend two matching resources to use the symbol on your neighbor’s disc.
After taking your reward, you can spend the appropriately colored resources to acquire the ape depicted on your disc: three to get a level I card and six for a level II. For chimpanzees, you can spend three or six of any single resource. Place the newly acquired card on top of your deck for use next turn.
Midgame monkey line
If you want, you can spend four RAGE — which I don’t think is written in all-caps, but I didn’t read the rules, so I’m just going with it — to remove one of the cards you used this turn from the game. Each starting card gives you a reward of one depicted resource, whereas every card you purchase gives you 3 points. As you can imagine, you want to upgrade cards, remove basic tamarinds, and collect RAGE for an endgame push to 80 points by destroying your own tribe. Wow, not a cheery future at all, but I guess the apes were inspired by humans to be self-destructive.
Each game, you reveal three cards to determine how batteries can be used. In our game, you could spend two to discard a card and redraw during the first phase of a round; spend five for 5 points; or spend 6/9 to get a level I/II card of the type of your choice.
To end the round, discard your apes who have not been the victim of RAGE, then draw four new cards. Keep playing rounds until someone hits 80 points, at which time they win.
Cards on my final turn
As you can probably tell, After Us is all about the puzzle of how to arrange your cards in a row and which disc to use, which corresponds to which card to acquire. You can never complete all of the boxes on your cards, but as you get better apes, you gain more boxes complete on a single card and more powerful half-boxes to combine, such as me getting 3 points for nothing on the cards above.
I looked at what my opponents were doing, but only to compare my position on the scoring track to them and to guess which disc they might play since I could use one of them as long as I had resources to spare. Otherwise, After Us is a head’s down game in which you’re trying to squeeze every benefit possible out of what’s available to you. Seems like a very human thing to do. Ideally civilization doesn’t perish due to everyone being addicted to After Us and letting the world fall apart around us…
Twelve Monkeys anyone?
