One of the most glorious sights in After Us, the eco-conscious platform adventure from developer Piccolo Studio, is honey. Partway through, you find yourself inside an enormous beehive, walls dripping with caramel gold. It looks good enough to eat alright, although actually it's good enough to climb – a sticky means for your spritely character to reach the upper echelons of the hive. As you rise, however, the delicious scenario turns sour. Caked within the nectar are the corpses of the bees. Soon, insect husks pile up in the hallways of the structure, until the scene resembles the aftermath of a massacre.
So it goes in After Us – a hazy concoction of beauty and ugliness. Piccolo's ambitious follow up to its accomplished indie debut, Arise: A Simple Story, thrusts you into a warped post-human world, where everyone and everything is dead, and wondrous remnants, such as that honey, linger like reminders of lost treasure. Then again, maybe it's not lost forever. As a magical Spirit of Life, you set off to track down and release eight animal essences to revitalize the energy of Gaia.
