Afterlife is a god simulator/city builder game released in 1996 by LucasArts. You play as the Demiurge, and are tasked with building a Heaven and Hell for a planet of aliens called EMBOs. Along with zoning punishment and reward zones for the seven deadly sins and holy virtues, you must also manage your workforce by building Topias for your demons and angels, influence your planet's technology progression as well as their beliefs and behaviors to make sure they don't die out, and a lot more.
To be honest, the only reason I bothered to go play this game was because I was going through another "playing pc games I never got to have as a kid" phase, and wanted to play something new. I love city builders, I love micro managing, but I wanted something else other than Ceasar III or Pharaoh for the millionth time. So, I googled "City Building Games" and found a list on Wikipedia.
"Ah, this sounds like a cool game." I thought to myself as I downloaded it from Internet Archive and loaded it up on my Windows XP virtual machine. "Surely this game won't become a hyperfixation due to quirky characters with little to no canonical backstory!"
Clearly, I underestimated the goblins in my brain.
Not too long after starting a new game, watching the first tutorial, buying way too many expensive structures, and going into debt, I instantly fell in love with the game and immediatley starting trying to find content about it to consume. The issue is...this game is extremely obscure, and there wasn't much except the game's soundtrack (which you are probably listening to right now, if you have autoplay enabled on your browser), a playthrough, the game's trailer, and a few reviews.
No fanart, no fanfiction, not even a WMG page on TVTropes.
And it was at that moment that I felt a mighty need to bring this game to a modern audience, and hopefully start a small fandom.
Also, you can get the game on steam for about $5, and the extensive player's guide here. So you don't have to go through the rigamaroll of making a virtual machine just to play it.
These two. Jasper Wormsworth (The handsome gent on the left.) and Aria Goodhalo (The lovely lady on the right.) are your two advisors to help you in your duties as Demiurge. It's wise to check in with them every now and then, because they can tell you what you can improve on and any problems you need to fix urgently. They also give you in-game tutorials that teach you the basics of the game. They're even fully voiced, which for 1996 was considered impressive.
Their dialogue is mostly banter, bickering, and snark-to-snark combat, as you would expect. Being LucasArts characters, even their solo lines have charm and help to somewhat define their personalities. They kind of give off the vibe of being friendly rivals and, well maybe it's just me, but I definitely think they may be a lot closer than they let on. Perhaps a budding romance behind the scenes? Again, that's just me, though.
Since you're already here, let me enlighten you with some of my headcanons. Here's some things to keep in mind:
There are multiple planets and each one has an afterlife.
Each planet evolves at different speeds, but are surprisingly similar to Earth in terms of religion, culture, and technology.
-During her life she grew up during the 60s and 70s, raised by a very conservative and religious family. She was raised with the belief that you only go to Heaven or Hell, and spend eternity there, but secretly she believed that it was possible to redeem yourself in Hell before going to Heaven, and that you could reincarnate if you wanted to.
-She died when she was 21 years old. She collided with a speeding pickup truck on a freeway bridge over a lake, her car rolled over the barrier. Her dress was caught in the seat belt buckle, and she was unable to free herself before she drowned.
-Because of her death, she has a fear of deep water, and tends to stay away from ports, boats, and reward zones that involve pools, lakes, or rivers. She's also not a big fan of driving anymore, not that there's much driving in the afterlife, but given the chance to drive she wouldn't take it.
-Her biggest regret is that she never found her true love. With how she was raised, she faithfully awaited for "the one," too afraid to make the first move as it may be considered lust. (Her family was kinda fucked up.) She did have a couple boyfriends in her lifetime, but they were short lived relationships.
-Her only real sin was envy, as a teenager she always found herself envious of those who had found love. (Gonna be real, she was way too nice and pleasant for a lot of the envy punishments, so they just stuck her in Survey of the Damned (More on that building later.) Her punishment wasn't even that long, like 6 or 7 years.) While working in different afterlives she didn't experience any envy, but occasionally a sadness and loneliness that not even the positive vibes of Heaven could take away.
-She chose to become an angel and specialize in rewards for chastity because she wanted to give others the chance at love she never had. She thought this was a good idea, but it ended up making her regrets worse.
-Her favorite song is Wouldn't It Be Nice by The Beach Boys.
-During his life he grew up more around the 70s and 80s, he was from a wealthy family. His parents favored his older brother over him, and he spent his adulthood trying to become successful enough to win over his parents, but never did.
-He and his family were somewhat agnostic, he himself didn't really have a singular belief but he did believe in an afterlife. At first he believed that the afterlife would make things better for him, that he'd eventually get to Heaven and be free from all of his stress, but towards the end of his life he became more cynical and jaded and accepted that he was most definitely going to Hell.
-He died at the age of 32 of a heart attack, he had been too busy running his business and severely neglected his health (he was a heavy smoker and drinker, and the stress didn't help). He was working overnight and died at his desk, his employees didn't discover his body until a week later.
-His biggest sins were greed and envy, being envious of his brother and wanting more and more success. Secretly, his biggest regret is that he spent so much time focused on trying to be better than his brother rather than actually living his life to the fullest. He even had a wife at one point, but they divorced because of how much of a workaholic he became.
-He ended up becoming a demon because the afterlife was short on administrators, and he had a lot of experience in that sort of thing. It was just something he was comfortable doing because it was so familiar. In fact he became an advisor long before Aria did.
-He's good at hiding his emotions from others, in private he's a little less stonefaced, but just a little.
-His favorite song is Don't Fear The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult.
Besides Aria and Jasper, there's a ton more of that classic LucasArts style of humor around the game, from the descriptions of the buildings that pop up in your astral planes, to the "natural disasters" that can happen, to even the ways you can lose the game.
Here's also a few of my favorite buildings in the game and their descriptions, taken from the player's guide:
For eons now, the Demons of Hell have been trying to find out if Heaven's all it's cracked up to be. To this end they've enlisted (or, if you prefer, "enslaved") the Envious Damned to do a telephone survey of Heaven. Naturally, having to spend eternity conversing with SOULs who are infinitely happier than they are is tremendously excruciating to these poor schmucks, but hey, that's Hell...,
Remember that scene in "A Clockwork Orange" where Malcolm McDowell was being forced to watch a seemingly neverending series of violent and pointless movies? This is infinitely worse. And the popcorn sucks.
Anyone who's ever looked deeply into the eyes of a cow knows the truth; cows are the single most blissed-out creatures in all of creation. On the B.B.B. Ranches, this characteristic is taken to its logicial endpoint, as Contented SOULs are allowed to live out their afterlives as happy, cud-chewing cows. MoooOOOoooo.
Unique among the Gluttony punishments in Hell, Sticky's serves food that people actually like. Unfortunately, all they serve is "sticky" food: peanut butter sandwiches, caramel apples, pancakes smothered in syrup, etc. And there's nothing to drink... and the napkins are one-ply... and they don't believe in flypaper.
These Sloth Punishments are simple, yet evil. First, the Damned are given persistent, annoying itches in difficult-to-reach parts of their bodies. Then, their hands are bound up in cute little hi-tech manacles that prevent them from scratching. Finally, they're dumped onto a field of plush, satiny, almost frictionless pillows. Demons come from miles around to watch the poor suckers twitch.
The Sisyphus Mountains are classics of eternal damnation. Every day, the Slothful Damned push massive boulders up the side of an immense mountain. Every evening, just as they're about to reach the top, their footing gives way, causing their boulders to roll down to the bottom.
Kids are forever being described as "lazy," just because they don't want to take out the garbage. But have you ever taken a good look at how kids spend their summer afternoons? They build treehouses. They bake mudpies. They concoct elaborate schemes to turn their scooters into flying machines. Clearly, kids aren't lazy; they just don't have the same set of priorities as adults. In Heaven, Diligent SOULs get the chance to finally finish all those magical, complicated projects they dreamt up during those fleeting summer childhood afternoons; they're only called home for dinner once the forts are built, the pies are baked, and the scooter is soaring over the valley.
There's something about laundromats that have caused them to be surprisingly effective punishments for Lusty SOULs. Maybe it's the bottomless baskets of disgustingly soiled laundry. Perhaps it's the migraine-inducing fluorescent lights that flicker at precisely the worst moment. Maybe it's the fact that all the SOULs are dressed in their "back of the dresser" clothes. Whatever the reason, any and all bawdy impulses a SOUL might have are permanently frustrated by these dreary little buildings.
Neither rain, nor snow, nor divine intervention will stay the Wrathful Damned from getting their just desserts in these monuments to white-hot rage. One group of the Damned is forced by demonic supervisors to sort through Hell's mail (which, as you might imagine, is poorly addressed, smells funny, and very often explodes) at an inhuman pace. The rest of the Damned are fated to stand in a nevermoving line, laden with important, heavy, leaking packages. Every time someone gets close to the front of the line, all the windows close for lunch. Needless to say, convenient rifle racks have been placed on BOTH sides of the counter...
This simplest of Pride punishments requires little or no demonic upkeep: the Damned are given a set of functional gills and dumped in a giant aquarium, where their every move is ogled by amused Demons.
In this humiliating punishment, the Damned are shrunk down to the size of dolls and turned into the playthings of nasty little Demon children. The doll houses come in many varieties, but the most popular is the Maliboo Scream House.
As the name implies, the Damned in these zones are shrunk down to the size of ants, and forced to live out their afterlives burrowing in a thin layer of sand trapped between two sheets of plastic. Icky.
For centuries, Demons have attempted to devise a sound as maddening as the simple screech of fingernails on a chalkboard. To date, they haven't succeeded.
In Hell, some of the Damned must constantly repeat grades 7 through 9 because of an error on their permanent records. To make matters worse, they keep showing up to school in their underwear.
Ever wanted to run the Universe? Now you can! Residents of the ultra-snazzy SimSimSimSimSim are given their own simulated universes to create, build, and control as they see fit. And when you get right down to it, who's to say that their realities are any more valid than our own? For all we know, the whole of what we laughably label "reality" is defined by a handfull of clever AI routines running in the Omniversal equivalent of a pocket calculator, and death is nothing more than some pangalactic being hitting the "Clear" button. Makes you think, don't it?
There's also some snags you can run into that you have no control over, these serve as the "natural disasters" of the game. You can have giant birds pooping all over Heaven, giant bats pooping all over Hell, a giant flying nose that steals buildings from Hell and deposits them into Heaven, a giant flying picnic basket that does vice-versa, Hell can freeze over, Heaven can get the blues, a giant hand plays craps across your Heaven, and a disco demon plows his way through Hell.
It's absolutely a wild game.
There's plenty more I could go on about. But please, I urge you to look at the players guide and play the actual game instead.
Anyway, one of my biggest challenges these past few days was breaking into the game, and trying to extract all the assets I could. The only things I'm missing right now are the building sprites (I got the ones on here from another website, but some of the images are missing.) And Jasper and Aria's sprites. As is usual with DOS games, these sprites are stored in some sort of proprietary format that, unless someone has a program that can decode these formats, aren't going to be ripped from the game for the time being.
But, there's a few other things I managed to extract from the game, namely the huge, fullcolor pictures created for some of the different structures, and some concept art. And here they are so you can stare at them all you want.
Anyway, thanks for reading through this page. :)
And, if you're a fandom nerd who can draw, write, whatever, please help me create a little fandom for this gem of a game.
Also, HUGE shoutout to Michael Stemmle, lead designer and creator of the game.