After Inc. Revival
Preview
Rebuilding humanity one settlement at a time...
EA SCOUT the last line of defense for buying on Steam's Early Access
by Dan Lenois
previewed on PC
The Day After...
On the surface, After Inc. Revival is fairly straightforard. An extinction-level zombie apocalypse has eradicated most of humanity, with its few survivors taking shelter in underground bunkers. Now that the zombie population has mostly decayed into rotting biowaste, it is your responsibility as the overseer of the surviving populace, to establish new settlements among the ruins of what once lay great cities.
Each level presents a unique combination of tasks that will force the player to adapt to changing circumstances. Your settlement requires all the basic necessities for any society to function: Clean water, a consistent food supply, building material, and a heat source. This is represented in the corner of the screen by five essential resources: Food, Water, Wood, Firewood, and Stone.
The Price of Progress...
Before advancing your reemergent civilization with new technological developments, or increasing the population size, the player must ensure their resource supply can support said expansion. Staying on top of the supply lines will present one of the biggest ongoing challenges the player will face. Of course there is the occasional surprise attack from zombies to throw just a pinch of chaos into the mix, but one thing that will rush you to a fail state faster than anything is when your people run out of an essential resource, particularly food, water, or firewood.
Running out of regular wood or stone isn't ideal, and can eventually drain your reputation if ignored too long, but nowhere near as quickly as an essential resource. Zombies? That's so what-ever. #ZombiesAreOverrated. Run out of food for literally a day? Your people will immediately go into rebellion mode.
Act and React...
In lieu of a turn-based turn system, After Inc. Revival adopts a stamina bar mechanic, where over time, players build up a certain number of stamina points, which is used as the main currency for developing upgrades for your settlement. Want to build a town square to improve your citizens' mood? That'll be 3 stamina points, please. Need to upgrade your citizens' homes from tents to proper houses? Cough up 2 stamina points each. All this being on top of whatever materials said upgrades require, such as wood for new houses.
Learning to balance your people's demands against your available resources will become a tightrope walk you'll have to diligently balance as the game progresses. The more people you have, the faster their impatience grows when you don't immediately comply with their demands. It can often feel arbitrary and sometimes even outright unfair, but with enough experience, you'll gradually learn how to navigate these turbulent waters.
Overall:
After Inc. presents an enjoyable and highly-replayable gameplay flow. Its slower pace compared to prior Inc. games allows the game to be lower stress while still putting up a fair challenge. Its wide range of difficulty settings enable you to further customize the challenge to your level of comfortability. With dozens of levels already available, there's more than enough to keep a player engaged for easily 50+ hours already, not including the daily map rotation which offers up 2-3 new randomized missions every single day.
The only thing that somewhat holds this game back, particularly when compared to prior entries in the series, is the absence of a custom mode. While arbitrary difficulty levels are fine, he inability to mix and match gameplay modifiers freely is keenly felt. However, with new campaigns and features confirmed to be on the horizon, the future looks bright for After Inc. Revival.
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Recommend
There are no guarantees - but we'd bet our own money on this one. If you're going to take a chance with yours, odds are good this one will deliver.
