Hello everyone and welcome to the first dev diary for Afterworld! My name is Dan Lind and I am the game director for it. This is what I have been doing the last few years since I handed over Hearts of Iron IV, it feels good to be back talking to you guys and doing dev diaries again! I guess you are curious so let's get into the vision and what the game is about!
Afterworld is an upcoming grand strategy game set in the semi-procedural ruins of North America after The Fall, a world-spanning apocalyptic war. The Fall happened in the future, where technology had rapidly advanced. A century after that world-shattering event, remnants and relics of that age still exist to be unearthed and fought over by the surviving tribes of the dustland. You will be leading bands of survivors, rediscovering America, forging your followers into a proper society and ultimately a great empire - your empire from the ashes.
Why the apocalypse?
I have been wanting to make a post apocalyptic game for ages and I think I wrote the first drafts for Afterworld somewhere back in 2012 - in fact I am surprised people didn't figure out what I was doing earlier (I even told you 5 years ago in an interview haha). I think the setting is a perfect mix of the procedural sides of Stellaris and the historical sides of our other games - it’s a world you know and are familiar with, but changed, twisted, and with interesting lore to discover and learn about. I have also wanted to work on something a bit darker and grittier that explores humans in extreme situations - which is a perfect fit for the apocalypse.
You probably wonder about the setting and scale: North America, to me, was the perfect place because there are mostly natural borders, or at least borders I can explain ingame. If we had picked Europe we would need to set an arbitrary limit somewhere between Russia and China somewhere. The other main advantage of the US is that it's definitely one of the most known places across the globe when it comes to geography, landmarks, and such, so more people will be able to pick up on their surroundings.
Design pillars and principles
With Afterworld we are trying to create a fresh and different GSG experience. Here are a couple of our guiding design pillars and principles:
Adapt to Survive - The player will need to adapt to what occurs in the world, and their carefully laid plans are prone to spin into something else (It's more Crusader Kings than Hearts of Iron in that sense).
Rediscovery - We are not inventing, we are rediscovering and scavenging a lost world. There should always be new things to explore, and your powerful discoveries can fundamentally alter the story of your playthrough. This is also about rediscovering the history and lore of the world!
Shape Your Society - The people of the tribe are your greatest resource. To shape and control them, you need to create a suitable society to fit their needs as well as your own. We want to let players create the societies of their dreams (or nightmares).
Accessible, with Growing Depth - Afterworld aims to be the easiest GSG to pick up and get immersed in, without sacrificing complexity or depth. We do this by tying many mechanics to exploration and discovery so that they get progressively unlocked for a deeper and deeper game without overwhelming you during the first 10 minutes.
Immersive and Tangible - In Afterworld, design immersion always trumps abstract mechanical design so we will lean towards simulation rather than “board game” rules. Concepts like "mana currencies" must make sense, feel natural, and optimally these costs are all real - for example resources, lives, bullets or days.
As we start revealing mechanics you will see how these have formed the game :)
Compared to our other games
My goal from the start was to create something that complemented and added a unique twist to our stable of games. We often say that many of our GSGs have a secondary genre: HOI is GSG+Wargame, CK is GSG+RPG, Victoria is GSG+Economy Sim, Stellaris is GSG+4X etc. Afterworld tries to take inspirations from Settlement and Survival games, and then scale those ideas up to GSG levels. That means things like: starting small, slowly revealing new mechanics, detailed resource gathering and development as well as environmental dangers and challenges to overcome.
Being ahistorical, the closest game you will think about is probably Stellaris, our last new IP (10 years ago now :O). The games are quite different though - let’s compare:
Setting - Stellaris started as a sandbox where any trope or inspiration from space sci-fi could fit (altho has been developing its universe more and more over the years). Afterworld has a distinct and defined history and world with established characters and factions, although the apocalypse itself shakes things up every game for replayability (find out more in a future diary). Both games have room for you to create empires and tell stories but in Afterworld, more has already happened before you get started.
Scale - Stellaris scales up from a regular GSG into a humongous galaxy with epic space battles. Afterworld instead gets closer, models raids of truck convoys and skirmishes, small squads with named leaders exploring underground bunkers and adds detail not normally there in GSG - both equally complex with similar amounts of actors and AI, but at a different zoom levels for a really different feeling
Who you play - Stellaris lets you intricately define who you play at the start, ethics, powers etc. Afterworld lets you set up a short backstory for your tribe, but given the state of the world, you’ll be much less established, so it puts most of these decisions into the game and makes you choose them as you play and develop your society over many years.
That’s it for today! Remember to wishlist and follow along with the development! I am incredibly excited to be sharing this with you all finally!
Alongside our dev diaries, we will include an ongoing narrative of an explorer, Turns, passing through the world and their interviews, reports and other writings along the way. This should give you a nice taste of the world, and its people. And if you would like to get a first glimpse into the deep lore of Afterworld, our digital comic is available for free to everyone subscribing to our newsletter. Until next time!
Next week, on Tuesday September 1st we will have our next dev diary - this time going into some of the world of Afterworld.
Turns Expedition - Interview Excerpt.
Subject: ensign of the Pacific Fleet.
Subject is a member of my own expedition. I have asked him to discuss the Fleet. Subject has asked me to note that he considers this an odd inclusion in our report on the state of the North American continent. But to understand our place in this land, we must understand ourselves.
“Eli Flips-The-Switch, ensign on supply ship Kingfisher, currently on special assignment to the Turns Expedition. I got my name growing up on reactor sub Tampa, they use kids for simple jobs because there’s so little space. We’d take our leisure shifts up on agricarrier Carl Vinson. That seemed like the biggest place in the world. As big as I could ever imagine.
And now I’m standing on the continent. You can just… walk any direction. The quiet here makes me nervous sometimes. There are so many lonely places. You’re never alone on the Fleet.
The Fleet’s old, older than the Fall. It was a weapon of the Ancients. There was a land called Hawaii, and the people there took shelter on the Fleet when the Fall came, and they ran instead of fighting. We’re still running, just like our grandparents and their grandparents. But you can’t run forever. It’ll be time to fight soon.”
