There are many professionals who aspire to the job of their dreams, but few who dare to leap from their work to their passions, and even fewer succeed in the process. One of the few exceptions may be the team of Jordi Ministry, Alexis Corominas and Oriol Pujadó, each with a different background and expertise, which has already stood out in the advertising world, bringing it into the universe of interaction and digital worlds. One fine day, close to gaming, after 20 years of selling other people’s products, they decided to sell their product: a video game.
The truth is that their first attempt was successful and in this industry that is unlikely, almost impossible: ‘Get Up, A Simple Story’ is a simple game on the surface, but it contains all the experience of this team to convey emotions. The player is something we might consider the first steps in video games still being taken, but with almost half a century of experience in advertising in the strictest sense. It was a success, at least in terms of an indie game made by a new studio in Spain. Enough to dare to buy without hesitation for worldwide distribution with Take-Two’s second project, ‘After Us’, which also focuses on emotion through Private Division, its subsidiary dedicated to indie games.
A different experience that aims to arouse interest in us
To use the industry’s own language, ‘After Us’ is a platform game, but its authors have worked hard to create a title that is more transcendent on an emotional level: people who live from leading the crime of ending the world, even the hope in humanity lives on thanks to its main protagonist. We’re directing a character named Gaia, who almost instantly loses her importance in relation to her mission and the enormity of the scenarios she plays. And ‘After Us’ wants to offer us a different experience; where we had to go through inhospitable scenarios to bring the spirits of various animals back to life, avoiding nasty creatures along the way that have almost no definite shape, because they are the human race that definitely brought the end of the world. But in this game there are no big or permanent enemies, there are challenges, puzzles, skill tests and above all the main task to bring the spirits of extinct animals back to life.
take care of the planet
The star of this work is undoubtedly the settings, each with a different, distinct design and even gameplay mechanics to evoke a constant sense of exploration and wonder in the user, but they all tell the same story of destruction and planetary abuse. . . There are no predefined paths, and the settings are often too large for the character, such that Gaia’s speed is incredibly fast for navigating these paths. There are also no signs pointing to the route, but here you can see the experience of its authors in always leaving us the necessary clues to reach our destination and making it seem like it was our decision and not theirs. There is nothing random in ‘After Us’, both the decorations, the characters, the few enemies or environments and the way they go through them all combine in a consistent way to reinforce the feelings, emotions of the game.
Unknowingly, its creators almost took us back to where they wanted to tell the game in terms of concepts, intentions, emotions, rather than a product. All in all, ‘After Us’ is a fun, exciting, at times exciting title that will leave an indelible mark on the player.