Set in a post apocalyptic world, the apes are taking over. With increased intelligence and human abilities, they are now ruling the world! In After Us, you'll be leading a clan of apes to gather resources and attract new clan members as you climb the scale of intelligence.
This game received alot of excitement at UKGE 2023 and we picked it up shortly afterwards partly to see what all the hype was about but also because we were intrigued by the theme and puzzley element to it that we'd heard so much about! We were also lucky enough to get a demo of After Us shortly after we purchased our copy, by the lovely team at Hachette whilst we were at Handycon.
First Impressions
I was immediately drawn in by the colourful artwork of the game and I was intrigued to see how the cards worked as the puzzle like elements really stood out to me. The components are a really nice quality, at first glance the cards looked as though they might have a linen finish, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover they weren't. The boards have a nice thickness to them and the resources are all painted wooden pieces aside from the battery's which are punch board tokens. As we were taught this game before I had a chance to read the rules, I don't feel it would be fair to give my first impressions on the rules as by the time I read them for myself, I already knew the basics of how the game worked.
Game Play Overview
After Us is played over several rounds until a player reaches or exceeds 80 points, at which point the current phase is completed and the game ends with the player with the most points winning. Each round is made up of 3 phases:
Assembling the Tribe: each player draws 4 cards off the top of their personal decks and arranges them in an order of their choice below their player board lining up various different frames which you will then activate to gather resources and gain victory points.
2. Attracting New Apes: you'll each choose an action disc, placing it facedown on your player board and once all players have chosen, you'll reveal and resolve your action before attracting new apes into your tribe by feeding them their preferred resources [3 for a level 1 primate and 6 for a level 2 primate] which then gets added to the top of your draw pile.
3. Resting Phase: you'll now discard all of the cards in your primate assembly and prepare for the next round.
These 3 phases are repeated with each player carrying out each phase simultaneously until the end game condition of 80 victory points is met. As the game progresses, you'll be able to resolve better combinations and afford stronger apes which will help you race up the intelligence track.
Pros and Cons
Whilst there's a lot going on in After Us, being able to take the time to figure out the optimal layout of your primate assembly each round in order to get the resources needed to attract the primate you want for your tribe, is somewhat therapeutic to me. It's easy to get lost in your own world as you arrange and rearrange the cards to get the best puzzle result you can. However partly due to this but mostly due to the simultaneous gameplay, it's a very independent game with very little interaction between players which can make it feel like you're playing a solo game where you're just racing to beat the other players to 80 points. This is however mitigated slightly by the action discs where you can spend resources to copy the action of a player on either side of you. The game does have a good deck building mechanic, with a variety of primates that can add some interesting twists to the combinations you can create.
Final Verdict
Overall, I liked this game but it just falls shy of my top 3 deckbuilding games. I felt it had a little too much independent play for my preference but the mechanics worked well and I enjoyed the puzzle of putting aligning the apes to gain the resources and points I wanted.
In conclusion, we would rate this game a 7.5/10
You can find a how to play video of this game on our product page on the link below:
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