Indie Game of the Week 435: After Death

It's not every day when the entire internet is in an exploraction mood, so how else was I meant to approach IGotW this time around but with one of the many such games I have in reserve for emergencies? (Or really just any possible excuse I might have?) After Death is a macabre spin on the formula as it drops you in a nightmarish world of bone, sinew, and decay as you piece together who or what you are and how you might escape this hellish oubliette. As per usual for the genre you typically find yourself prodding at the various paths at your disposal until you find one you're able to traverse with your current upgrades, then follow it to its terminus where a boss and a new upgrade awaits.

After Death is pretty barebones, as it were, in that it lacks much of a GUI or menus of any kind. It does have a map, of course, and you can find fragments that fill in (most) of the current area, but there's nothing complex like markers or indicators it feels the need to fill in for you, beyond remembering where the save rooms and teleports are. Most areas boil down to slashing your way through dozens of enemies as you check out alternative routes and find items that might help you, or a save room to offer some respite. There's a bunch of intriguing upgrades beyond the usual double-jump and "turn into a small thing to fit through gaps" (a bone spider in this case since your usual form is a skeletal soldier, which I'd argue is cooler than a space ball), and two of the more notable ones include sets of ice and fire armor that you can switch between on the fly. Ice will also freeze water while fire will melt the ice, providing a few puzzle instances where you need to mix and match the two to make progress through waterlogged areas.

It's also a combat-heavy game, though the combat doesn't really get more elaborate than a single melee attack and, later, a couple of short-range AoEs (from the aforementioned ice/fire armors) and a ranged weapon. The AoEs can be upgraded enough that you can eventually spam the things in conjunction with melee, which really takes down enemies fast, though this will of course require some exploring to find said upgrades first. I'd say getting from A to B is usually more dangerous than the boss fights themselves, barring a few scrappy internecine types that might need you to track down some health upgrades first, and while you don't keep any progress made since your last save the game is at least cool enough to preserve your map data, albeit shaded.

Visually, the game has this high-res detailed but also slightly crude look to it which I find endearing. The aesthetic appeal is most striking with the larger foes, including bosses, creating the sort of drippy eldritch horrors that wouldn't look amiss in a Blasphemous or Bloodborne. I might love the soundtrack, an eclectic offering of moods and styles that might sound like a track from Donkey Kong Country one moment and Splatterhouse 3 (or some similarly grungy Mega Drive game) the next, and does a great job injecting the game with a retro personality that its crisper modern graphics doesn't quite deliver. After all, sometimes you just want to run around being a skeleton who can punch the crap out of weird monsters, with some badass music as an accompaniment.

After Death's main issue is that it feels so paper thin compared to everything else on the market, with very little in the way of envelope-pushing or innovation even taking into account the year it was released: 2017, same as Hollow Knight and SteamWorld Dig 2. Yet the actual gameplay and fundamentals of the exploraction genre are strong enough here that much can be forgiven for just being "another one of those" in lieu of any loftier ambitions beyond a metaphysical (if predictable) narrative. The presentation has its grisly charms, its difficulty curve is fair but rarely a cakewalk, the map's pretty damn huge and you're likely to spend a good 6-8 hours to find everything, and with a dozen boss fights with their patterns to learn and almost as many traversal abilities to acquire it keeps you on your toes throughout. The achievement set does have a time trial, so that's immediate points off, but otherwise the set provides some hints about hidden content that is engaging to find so it almost breaks even. Its oversimplification might well be a deterrent, especially with so many big deals competing for your attention in this space (including a certain red-robed newcomer, and an armored heroine due for an imminent return), but I can't really argue After Death puts a bony foot wrong either in delivering a solid exploraction experience.

Rating: 4 out of 5.