to take some good jabs at people and things
that bothered me at the time,” he explains.
Despite shining a harsh light on the more
absurd aspects of the human condition, the game
avoids becoming mired in negativity – aided by
a broad, ‘humanist’ score from Peter McConnell.
It goes to great lengths to explain that, though
Earth-like, the planet is not Earth, and the creatures
which inhabit it worship a wide range of fictional
religions. These beings are EMBOs, or Ethically
Mature Biological Organisms, who each have a
SOUL, or Stuff Of Unending Life. Some believe
only in heaven, others in hell; some believe in
reincarnation, others in no afterlife at all.
The demiurge begins with a pair of empty
planes. First, they must build gates, to allow
SOULs to enter, before constructing a network
of roads. Keeping an eye on the planet of the
EMBOs, they generate an appropriate balance of
punishments and rewards by drawing zones for
each of the seven sins and virtues: Envy, Avarice,
Gluttony, Sloth, Lust, Wrath and Pride in hell, and
Contentment, Charity, Temperance, Diligence,
Chastity, Peacefulness and Humility in heaven.
Training centres, convert SOULs into angels and
demons, to help run things on the ground.
“As you might imagine, hell is a heck of a lot
easier to design, because ironic punishments are
a dime a dozen,” says Mike. “That said, I think I
enjoyed designing heaven more, both because
it was more difficult and because it didn’t make
me feel like I was wolfing down
karmic junk food.” Reward
and punishment tiles
spawn beautiful pixel
art structures, where“we pretty much allowed our artists to cut loose”.
“Frankly, I’m a little disturbed to think about what
their visual influences were.”
Kevin Evans, also a SimCity aficionado, was
responsible for some of the artwork in hell,
drawing upon the nightmarish works of HP
Lovecraft, Clive Barker, Francis Bacon, Stanisław
Szukalski, HR Giger and Zdzislaw Beksinski. The
game, he believes, was the perfect example of
“what LucasArts did best when management
trusted its developers to do what they do
best”. After 25 years in the industry, Afterlife
remains one of his fondest experiences.
Meanwhile, Chris Hockabout, who joined the
project’s art team after completing Hal Barwood’s
Big Sky Trooper for SNES, thought it sounded
hilarious. “I’d be given a simple direction, like
to design ‘an angel city that plays off of the old
saying: how many angels can you fit on the head
of a pin? ’ So, basically, a fanciful city that’s built on
the head of a pin. I’d do some concept sketches,
find which ones the leads liked the most and then
draw them in Photoshop,” he recalls.
While Chris would have liked to have seen
a terrain system in hell, and Dantean tiers, the
deceptively simple game boasts mind-boggling
depth. SOULs who are ready to reincarnate, for
example, need a karma station anchor, connected
with roads and karma tracks, to transport them out
of the afterlife. They travel in karma vehicles, via
portals, which hover between the two realms.
“We had a ludicrously complicated system for
tracking how the planet of the EMBOs evolved,
based on the feedback loop created by the
reincarnating EMBOs. It’s like a little sim game
buried within the sim, so you can sim while
you sim,” explains Mike. “The hardest thing, as
I recall, was to keep the game updating with a
proper rhythm, as the populations increased from
hundreds to hundreds of billions.”» [PC] The ideal heaven will boast a diverse population of vir tuous SOUL s,
tended to by both homegrown and impor ted angels.P
layers are given a wide array of
graphs and interfaces with which to
micromanage the various aspects of
their afterlife. Fortunately, the game pairs
its steep learning curve with a hearty helping of
humour. The demiurge is assisted by two on-
screen characters, Jasper Wormsworth and Aria
Goodhalo, a demon and angel with conflicting
natures. Having just finished up work on The
Dig, Graham Annable was brought in to lead the
Jasper and Aria character animations. “It was
completely unlike any of the other projects at the
company at that time,” says Graham. The toughest
part, he adds, was staying true to the concept art.
“In my efforts to keep the characters looking like
the concepts, I remember a lot of sweating over
the mouth positions for them. It was a tricky dance
to make sure the faces were emoting the desired
vibe, while still keeping them on model. Jasper
and Aria were unusual designs to say the least.”
Beyond Jasper and Aria, players can focus
on specific SOULs, and read their backstories.
These soar to Pythonesque, surrealist heights;
T’klak’takliaktu, who is being punished forENVY
ESCHER PITS
QEnvious souls are trapped in this network of
torture chambers – with each SOUL enduring
their own unique punishment. Assuming they
are suffering more than their neighbours, the
envious sinners can switch places.PRIDE
THE ZOO
QProud souls find their sin on suitably proud
display at the zoo. Here, they are stuffed into
cages and tormented, teased, prodded, fed
raw meat and humiliated for the amusement of
irritating bystanders.GLUTTONY
THE BOWELS OF HELL
QA rather grisly fate awaits gluttons. SOULs are
sewn into the digestive tract of an archdemon,
notorious for bad, spicy diets, feeding tubes
stuffed into their gobs, with the other end placed
into their neighbouring SOUL’s digestive tract.SLOTH
CONVENTION OF THE DAMNED
QThere is nothing worse than a drear y
convention, and this is the dreariest of them all,
complete with mandatory hot coal step aerobics,
and workshops such as ‘Making The Most Of
Your Downtime While Being Disembowelled’.AM
arar
o
te
and workshops such as ‘Making The Mmi
nd
spkarkarmm
an
sSLOTH
CONVVENTION OF THEEDA
QThereThereisnothingworsethanadre is nothing worse than a dreaa
convention, and this is the dreariest
complete with mandatory hot coal st
andworkshopssuchas‘MakingTheTHE SEVEN DEADLY SINS Aerlife delivers a grisly array of dark punishments
» [PC] Cheat too much and a
familiar space station will arrive
to obliterate your world.82 | RETRO GAMER