After Us

After Us is a game with The Planet of the Apes vibes. Humanity has collapsed, and now apes are starting to evolve intelligence and develop a new civilisation. 

This is a deck-building game, and the cards are used in a clever way. Every turn you draw four cards and must arrange them in a row with their sides touching. Cards have complete and incomplete boxes. Complete boxes give you resources or let you do certain things. Incomplete boxes are on the left and right sides of the cards. They give you resources or let you perform actions only if they are matched up with another incomplete box on the adjacent card. This is why the order you arrange your cards is important. You need to decide which half boxes to combine and often you need to sacrifice some of them. Some half box combinations allow you to convert one resource to another or to points. How you want to form the combinations depends on your strategy or situation. 

As you gather resources, you can spend them to buy new cards. In game terms you are recruiting new apes to your tribe. There are four ape types and they are generally better in a specific area. Gorillas help you remove weak cards from your deck. Mandrills help you score points more efficiently. Orangutans help you collect batteries which can be used to activate human artifacts. These are special powers randomly set up for every game and they are available to all players. Chimpanzees allow you to reactive powers already used in the current round. They are flexible. 

Ultimately your goal is to reach 80 points. This is when the game ends and whoever has the most points wins. As you tune your deck, your ability to score points improves. Managing your tempo is important. You need to be watchful for when the game might end. If you take too much time perfecting your deck but someone else goes quick and dirty and barely hits 80, you will lose because your engine is not ready. If you are going for quality, you need to make sure you can hit 80 in the same round as your fastest opponent. At that point if you have developed a strong tribe, you will outscore your rivals. 

This is a mid weight strategy game. It is mostly deck-building, the twist being how you need to line up your cards. I like that it brings a new idea to the table.