Surviving the Aftermath

[h1] A beautiful and tremendously underrated post-apocalyptic city-builder[/h1] It is hard to explain just how necessary this game was. In a genre filled with games which let you build the vibrant, lively city of your dreams, there was little to no attention devoted to post-apocalyptic, doomsday-ridden alternatives. Indeed, ever since I played The Last of Us years ago, I had been wondering just how a post-apocalyptic city-builder would look like that could properly capture the nuances, intricacies, and aesthetics of such a bleak and unforgiving scenario. And Surviving the Aftermath is precisely the kind of game I was hoping to get my hands on. The premise is as simple as it gets: humanity has been reduced to the brink of extinction as the Earth has been rendered almost inhospitable. Huge swathes of land are polluted, many more are barren, infertile wastelands and little remains of the lush, green vegetation that once populated our planet. Yet, dauntless and ever persistent as we are, mankind strives to rise from the ashes and tame this now unforgiving land it finds itself in. As can be expected of a city-builder, you start with a handful of colonists and a central building that serves as makeshift warehouse and gathering point for the fledgling community. From there you start erecting structures, laying roads, and designating patches for agriculture and harvest. Soon, you must set forth to gather materials from the leftovers of erstwhile civilisations, as you gather scrap metal, plastics and more to build your city. Your goal is to get a functioning supply chain that provides food and water for your colonists, before moving on to basic commodities, such as outhouses and burial pits, before finally moving on to amenities when you progress such as schools and taverns. Indeed, if all goes well, you will have a fully fledged industrial town churning out electric parts and electronics made of scrap materials which you will use to power and build weaponsmiths and car mechanic workshops. Essentially, you begin with Age of Empire’s Town Centre and end up with Diamond City from Fallout 4. All of these technological leaps must be procured by research, which opens up a myriad of technologies the further you advance up the technology tree. Yet, as can be expected, you will face threats aplenty in your path to preservation and, ultimately, prosperity: mutant animals roam the land and will attack your settlement whenever they can; raiders will come knocking at your gate extorting payment lest you be faced with retaliation and sometimes, the threat comes from within as members of your community turn against their fellow villagers to rob, steal or plunder. It is a bleak and despairing world whose complexity is further compounded by natural disasters which range from droughts, meteor showers, thunderstorms, snowstorms and epidemics, among many other plights that may befall your colony. Needless to say, survival depends on your carefully managing your community to make sure it stands the test of time and the hardships it brings with it. This all happens within the local map, but there is a whole outer world to be explored with your specialists. Specialists are this game’s “hero units”, which come in different classes, each of which confers different boons: Scavengers are quicker in looting sites on the World Map, Scientists are better at gathering science points from research sites on the World Map, Fighters usually deal more damage and have a higher HP count and so on. Yet ultimately, save for some specific interactions reserved for some classes in random encounters, most survivors do the same things; they are just better at doing those favoured by their specific classes. These specialists tread the world map far and wide, encountering other communities with whom you may engage in trade, war or even diplomatic pacts leading up to and including an alliance with them. For all its beauty, the game is not perfect: its main drawback is repetitiveness. After two or three games you will have seen all the game has to offer. And while you certainly can and should come up with different city layouts and strategies in different games, much as you would in Sim City or any other city-builder, there will come a time when you feel you have seen all there is to be seen. Admittedly, the game’s Steam achievements do serve as a stimulus of sorts to pursue other pathways but once you are done with those, you will find yourself hard-pressed to return to the game, unless you truly love the genre. Thankfully, this game boasts some of the best expansion packs out there that help immensely in making the game feel fresh, and I do not use the term "expansion pack" lightly, for some of these truly feel like expansion packs of old and not the DLC formula we have grown so used to and which more often than not, reek of money-grabbing. This game's first expansion, New Alliances, is such a full revamp of the game that dozens of hours into the expansion, I am still discovering new features over those of the base game. New Alliances basic premise, as the name implies, is delving deeper into the diplomacy aspect of the game: now there is an ultimate antagonist, a tyrannical faction dubbed “The Enemy” which is set to be your final, end-game antagonist and against whom you wage a Cold War of sorts during most of the game. Societies you stumble upon in the World Map find themselves caught in the crossfire between you and your enemy and it will be up to you to ensure that they pick your side, remain neutral or are obliterated into oblivion by your specialists. This expansion truly entails such a remarkable revamp of the game that I cannot begin to explain just how many changes it introduced; I, for one, cannot remember what the game looked like before the expansion. Rebirth is another DLC with a plethora of new features that very much transform the experience of the base game. I am still getting the gist of it, but it basically adds something I had very much longed for in this game: some sort of zombie apocalypse bit, whereby a fungus, called “the Blight” has spread across the Earth (sounds familiar?) and infects animals and people alike. Infected people turn into mindless, vicious husks of their former selves that have to be put down, lest they infect the rest of the colony. Yet studying the Blight may also lead to untapped potentials, even allowing for terraforming and bringing back life to the barren wasteland humanity is now forced to live on. The only DLC that I found rather bland is Shattered Hope, which arguably makes the game harder without improving the game in any noticeable manner. Unless you like a challenge, I would recommend staying clear of this one. Finally, most promising buyers are usually torn between this game and Endzone – A World Apart. Having played both of them I must say that Surviving the Aftermath is the clear winner. Endzone is a good game and its premise is as captivating as Surviving the Aftermath’s. But Surviving the Aftermath has a far better execution and far richer DLCs. Furthermore, Endzone’s UI is arguably the worst I have seen in a game in a long, long while, making it a cumbersome and gruelling job to do the most basic of functions, whereas Surviving the Aftermath, on the other hand, has one of the friendliest interfaces I have ever seen in a city-builder, something for which the game ought to be commended. TL; DR: captivating and innovative city builder that will keep you hooked for dozens and dozens of hours on end. Once you have seen most of it, you will find it to have a rather low replay value. Expansions are great and do a fantastic job at keeping it fresh for longer. 7.5/10