Other problems, like cataclysms that occur every now and then – like nuclear fallouts and winter storms – demand more immediate attention, and this is where the game really leverages its post-apocalyptic setting to deliver more intense tasks and challenges. Some problems, like dealing with sick or injured colonists or dealing with attacks from wildlife, become automated once you have the right structures or people in place, but they’re still engaging, because you need to make sure you do have that stuff in place. This being the apocalypse, you are, of course, also tasked every so often with putting out fires, and here, the game isn’t always consistent in how engaging it is with the activities it comes up with. "It’s a tight, addictive loop that grows more layered and engaging the more you play." Things can be a little cumbersome in the beginning, especially because Surviving the Aftermath doesn’t do a very good job of tutorializing, but once you pick up on the game’s central mechanics, everything quickly begins falling into place. It’s a tight, addictive loop that grows more layered and engaging the more you play. The two sides of the experience bleed into each other, and gathering more wood or plastic becomes just as important as upgrading your tents or unlocking new buildings and structures.Īs you welcome more survivors into your colony and recruit more specialists, the speed at which your settlement grows and progresses exponentially improves as well, allowing you to explore more of the world, which, in turn, allows you to expand your colony even further. You’re constantly micromanaging the inner workings of your colony and making sure that people are being put to work on the things that you need in the immediate future, but at the same time, you’re also always working towards more long-term, big-picture goals, like unlocking upgrades in the tech tree across different categories. It’s a loop that feeds itself in a very simple but equally effective manner. Once you’ve built a gate for your colony, that’s when the game really begins, because at that point, not only can you start taking in more survivors to expand your settlement, you can also start sending out your Specialists out into the world map to gather resources and scout out more of the map. In the first hour or so, you’ll mostly be building rudimentary structures to support your colonists’ basic needs, like housing and food, while also gathering resources to build those structures. Every game in Surviving the Aftermath starts out slow, setting you up in a procedurally generated map with a handful of survivors and limited options for building and upgrading things. "City building and management simulators set in the post-apocalypse aren’t all that common, with a few notable exceptions, but building on the foundations laid down by its spiritual predecessor Surviving Mars, Surviving the Aftermath is one that should probably go down as one of the better experiences in this very limited group."Ĭhief among those strengths is the core gameplay loop, which is ridiculously addictive, as it should be in any good building and management simulator. Surviving the Aftermath knows what it’s good at, and it smartly chooses to devote most of its attention to those strengths. You occasionally get quests and are asked to make choices, but all of it bleeds into the mechanical core of the game- and it’s better for it. There isn’t much of a story here, and once the setup is out of the way, the gameplay experience takes over. Surviving the Aftermath doles out tiny bits and pieces of lore and backstory for its world, but it is by no means something the game focuses on. In this mess, it falls to you to establish a small colony of survivors and make sure that you not only survive, but eventually, with the right management, grow, expand, and maybe, just maybe, thrive. The hubris of mankind has brought about the end of the world, and what’s left is dealing with a smorgasbord of apocalyptic cataclysms- nuclear fallouts, fire raining down from the sky, disease, deadly winter storms, bandits and survivors at each other’s throats, you name it. City building and management simulators set in the post-apocalypse aren’t all that common, with a few notable exceptions, but building on the foundations laid down by its spiritual predecessor Surviving Mars, Surviving the Aftermath is one that should probably go down as one of the better experiences in this very limited group. With Surviving the Aftermath, developer Iceflake Studios has attempted to tackle that setting in a manner that we haven’t seen all too often. The post-apocalypse has always been a popular genre in entertainment media, and video games aren’t exempt from that either. There’s something about the idea of the end of the world and subsequent desperate attempts at surviving what comes next that has enamoured creative minds for quite some time.
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