Afterlife

Afterlife is a 2019 interactive visual novel adventure game where players embody a ghost protagonist in a contemporary fantasy setting. Utilizing full-motion video and live-action elements, the game offers a narrative-driven experience with multiple endings through a menu-based interface and motion controls, blending real-time pacing with satirical undertones.

Afterlife: Review

In the expansive pantheon of video games, few titles embody a concept as profound and universally resonant as the afterlife. Yet, astonishingly, two vastly different games share the name Afterlife, separated by 23 years and representing diametrically opposed design philosophies. One is a 1996 satirical “god game” from the golden age of LucasArts, a gnostic city-builder of heaven and hell. The other is a 2019 live-action virtual reality “interactive film” from Signal Space Lab, a minimalist grief drama. To examine one without the other is to tell an incomplete story. This review will undertake the necessary dual analysis, treating them as complementary yet divergent artifacts: the first a complex, counter-intuitive simulation buried in obscurity, the second an elegant but flawed narrative experiment lost in the crowded VR landscape. Together, they form a fascinating study in how interactivity can approach the great unknown—through systemic irony or emotional immersion.

---

1. Introduction: The Demiurge and the Ghost

The legacy of Afterlife is a peculiar bifurcation. For the historian of strategy games, Afterlife (1996) is a cult classic—a brilliant, hilarious, and brutally opaque city-builder that dared to literalize the “god game” moniker. For the chronicler of VR’s evolution, Afterlife (2019) is a footnote—a technically competent but critically middling attempt to merge live-action performance with gaze-based interaction. The thesis of this dual review is this: The 1996 Afterlife is a masterclass in structural comedy and emergent gameplay, tragically shackled by impenetrable tutorials and a market that didn’t grasp its genius. The 2019 Afterlife is a poignant but technically limited narrative vehicle, whose seamless interaction is both its greatest strength and primary weakness, leaving players as passive observers in a story about active catharsis. Their shared name is not a coincidence but a thematic echo; both games attempt to model the metaphysical, one through Ctrl+Z infrastructure, the other through first-person spectral presence.

---

2. Development History & Context: Two Eras, Two Studios

Afterlife (1996): LucasArts’ Experimental Zenith

The 1996 Afterlife was born in the creative ferment of LucasArts’ adventure game heyday, but it was squarely a product of the simulation boom ignited by SimCity (1989). Lead designer Michael Stemmle pitched the concept while playing SimCity, fused with a lifelong fascination with Dante’s Inferno. His core question was pointed: “Why do game designers think game players fantasize about wearing suits?” He sought to move beyond mayors and presidents to a truly cosmic scale. LucasArts, described by Stemmle as “a rather experimental studio at the time,” greenlit the project for a team of roughly 20 people. The budget was small, and the studio’s reputation was built on point-and-click adventures, not complex simulations. This context is crucial: the game was an outlier, a passion project attempting to marry the humor of Day of the Tentacle with the depth of SimCity 2000. Artistically, designer Paul Mica was given immense freedom, resulting in a surreal aesthetic split: Heaven was classical and serene, Hell was “more intestinal,” drawing from H.R. Giger, Terry Gilliam, and Moebius. Composer Peter McConnell‘s score consciously avoided the solemn, opting for lighthearted but respectful motifs—C-sharp minor for Hell’s “key of doom” versus Beatles-influenced celestial choirs. The simultaneous Mac/PC release was a technical feat for LucasArts at the time, but the game’s complexity was its own worst enemy; documentation was notoriously inadequate, a fatal flaw in a genre reliant on understanding opaque systems.

Afterlife (2019): Signal Space Lab’s VR Gamble

By 2019, the VR landscape was defined by scale, combat, and puzzle-solving. Signal Space Lab Inc., a relatively small developer, took a radically different approach. Afterlife (2019) was conceived not as a game, but as a “360 VR interactive film.” Utilizing “cutting-edge VR filming technique,” it employed live-action actors and full-motion video (FMV) captured in 360 degrees around a set in Montréal. The pitch was simple: an intimate family drama about grief, where the player is the ghost of a drowned child, their presence influencing the family’s fractured dynamics. The technology was constrained by the limits of VR video compression, bandwidth, and the challenge of making a passive viewing experience feel interactive. The budget was modest, and the team operated in a market saturated with shorter VR “experiences.” Its release on multiple platforms ( PlayStation 4, Oculus Go, PC, mobile) via a low price point ($1.99) signaled a strategy of accessibility over spectacle. The development context is one of artistic ambition within technical and market limitations—a desire to explore narrative in VR through presence rather than action.

---

3. Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive: Satirical Cosmology vs. Grieving Realism

Afterlife (1996): The Ironic Afterlife

The narrative of the 1996 Afterlife is not a traditional story but a satirical cosmology. The player is a Demiurge—a local, managerial deity answerable to “The Powers That Be.” The lore is delivered through puns, absurdist descriptions, and the bickering of two advisors: Aria Goodhalo (an angel) and Jasper Wormsworth (a demon). The world is populated by EMBOs (Ethically Mature Biological Organisms), whose souls become SOULs (Stuff Of Unending Life). The core mechanical narrative is the player’s struggle to build efficient, ironic purgatories that align with the seven deadly sins and seven virtues (only two matching traditional heavenly virtues). The theme is structural comedy: every building contains a witty description. Heaven houses “The Only Non-Sleazy Singles Bar In Creation” and a reward for living as a cat. Hell contains “Illuminatiland” (gaslighting conspiracy theorists) and “Junior High” (eternal adolescent torment). The humor is Douglas Adams-meets-Mad Magazine, steeped in ironic punishment (“Tip of Your Tongue” for those who always forget words). The ultimate secret, The Mother Shak, is a personal easter egg from Stemmle—a crude warehouse emblematic of the Stanford Band, containing a philosophical note about watchmakers and immortality that reveals the designer’s spiritual grappling. The narrative is the sandbox; the story is told through systems and text.

Afterlife (2019): The Silent Observer

The 2019 Afterlife presents a straightforward, linear narrative framework, but with crucial branching pathways. The premise is devastatingly simple: a family (parents Emma and Thom, sister Chloe) grieves after their 5-year-old son, Jacob, drowns in the bathtub. The player is Jacob’s ghost, a silent, floating camera perspective. The thematic core is grief, guilt, and familial fracture. The narrative explores how each family member processes loss—the mother’s overwhelming guilt, the father’s withdrawn anger, the sister’s confusion. The player’s interaction is purely visual: by gazing at characters or objects, the unseen Jacob’s presence is felt, triggering different reactions and steering the story toward one of three endings (acknowledgement, absence, or a fragile peace). There is no dialogue from Jacob; the story is filtered through the performances of the live-action cast (Alarey Alsip, Daniel Brochu). The thematic weight is conventional but powerful, relying on naturalistic drama rather than satire. The “multiverse of different realities” is not a cosmological joke but a clinical metaphor for how grief branches in memory and negotiation. The ghost’s role is passive, making the interactivity a meditation on the inability to directly influence the living world—a stark contrast to the 1996 game’s god-player.

---

4. Gameplay Mechanics & Systems: Zoning vs. Gazing

Afterlife (1996): The Brutal Architecture of Eternity

The 1996 game is a deeply complex, counter-intuitive simulation that masquerades as SimCity 2000 in a surreal realm. Its core systems are a masterclass in opaque, emergent design.

• Primary Loop: Zone land for seven sin-specific and seven virtue-specific “fate structures” in Heaven (rewards) and Hell (punishments). Connect with roads, manage power via “Ad Infinitum” siphons from special rocks, and build gates for soul ingress/egress.
• The Vibes System: The game’s pivotal mechanic. Buildings emit “Good Vibes” (helpful in Heaven) or “Bad Vibes” (helpful in Hell). Fate structures must be under the correct vibe to evolve into larger, more efficient buildings. This requires meticulous spatial planning and balance.
• The Balance Slider (Micromanager/Macromanager): Every fate structure has a grayscale bar balancing “Research” (permanent souls) vs. “Production” (temporary, reincarnating souls). This must be constantly tuned. The Macro Manager can auto-balance all structures of a type but at a high cost. This system is never adequately explained in-game and is the key to survival.
• The Economy: Income is “Pennies from Heaven,” based on the soul rate. You start with imported angel/demon workers who commute expensively. Building “Topias” (housing) and “Training Centers” (to convert processed souls into workers) is essential. The hidden strategy: crash your worker training by lowering acceptance rates while boosting AQ/DQ (Angel/Demon IQ) for more efficient fate structures.
• Labor & Risk: Unemployment sparks a war between Heaven and Hell. Debt summons the “Surfers of the Apocalypso” to destroy everything. Nuclear war or an asteroid can wipe out the Planet’s population.
• Secret Knowledge: The path to victory (unlocking “Love Domes” and “Omnibolges”—the arcologies of the afterlife) depends on knowing that 2×2 structures are vastly superior to 3×3 for density and evolution speed. You must “lock” evolved structures to prevent backsliding. The optimal Vibes strategy is to heavily over-zone specific sin/virtue pairs (e.g., Chastity/Peace/Humility/Contentment in Heaven; Sloth/Avarice/Gluttony in Hell).
• Player Agency: You cannot assign souls. Your control is purely infrastructural and theological—you can influence EMBOs on the Planet to adopt specific sins/virtues and beliefs (tenets like “Heaven And Hell Await” vs. “Only Cloud Realms Await”), which dramatically shapes soul traffic.

In essence, the gameplay is a brutally difficult optimization puzzle wrapped in a joke. It punishes SimCity instincts (e.g., Hell should be an efficient grid—no, make it a long, torturous single road).

Afterlife (2019): The Illusion of Interaction

The 2019 game discards all traditional mechanics for a gaze-based narrative interface. There are no stats, no resources, no failure states.

• Primary Loop: Play through a ~60-minute story in ~10-minute “episodes.” The player floats as Jacob’s ghost, looking around a 360° live-action scene. Where you gaze determines which character’s perspective or plot thread is followed. Looking at an object can trigger a memory or shift the scene.
• Branching System: There are 29 unique choice points and three major endings. Crucially, the branching is seamless and invisible. You are not presented with dialogue wheels; the narrative simply follows your focus. This is its greatest innovation—it makes the player feel like an observational spirit, not a chooser of options.
• Interface: There is no HUD. Subtitles can be toggled (which enables stereoscopic 3D depth). The only feedback is a subtle vignette or shift in audio mix to guide attention (often criticized as insufficient). replayability comes from seeing different branches by intentionally gazing elsewhere.
• Critique of Mechanics: The system is elegant in theory but fatally imprecise in practice. As critic Matt Jordan of Jump Dash Roll noted, it’s “an impressive framework for a seamlessly interactive experience, devalued by the uneven melodrama.” Others (GBAtemp, SECTOR.sk) found it “painfully boring” and “amateur,” arguing the lack of clear affordances makes interactivity feel accidental. The “gameplay” is reduced to inadvertent path-selection, stripping away player intentionality. It’s an anti-game, prioritizing narrative flow over agency.

---

5. World-Building, Art & Sound: Satirical Surrealism vs. Domestic Realism

Afterlife (1996): A Land of Pun and Plastic

The world is a stunning, grotesque pastiche. Heaven is pastel, cloud-strewn, and classically adorned, but populated by bizarre rewards (eternal childhood, cat existence). Hell is a biomechanical nightmare of rust, sinew, and glitchy geometry—”intestinal” and oppressive, inspired by Giger and Bakshi. The UI is a remote control held by floating hands, a design born from pragmatism (Mica’s idea). The vibe is one of art-directed satire; even the roads in Hell are poorly done on purpose to maximize soul suffering. Peter McConnell’s score is legendary—a genre-defying mix of Gregorian chant for karma, Carmina Burana-esque dread for Hell, and Beatles-esque wonder for Heaven. The sound design is punctuated by the chipper warnings of Aria and the dry sarcasm of Jasper, voiced by just two actors (Rebecca and Milton James). The whole package is a cohesive, hilarious, and deeply strange aesthetic that fully commits to its premise.

Afterlife (2019): The Uncanny Valley of Grief

The world is a single, mundane house and surrounding neighborhood, filmed in live-action 360°. The art direction is domestic realism—the aesthetic of a mid-budget TV drama. The “afterlife” is represented by a抽象的 Void (white space) between scenes. The strength lies in the performances: the actors convey authentic anguish, and the 3D spatial audio grounds you in the environment. However, the technical limitations are glaring. The 360° video is often software-stereoscopic, leading to artificial, sometimes nauseating depth effects, especially in the opening hospital scene. The “interactive” framing device (the void) is a stark, minimalist realm that underscores the ghost’s isolation. The sound design relies on environmental cues and a minimalist score, but it cannot compete with the iconic, character-filled audio landscape of its 1996 namesake. The world feels real but limiting; you cannot touch anything, only look. This creates a profound tension between immersion and impotence.

---

6. Reception & Legacy: Cult Obscurity vs. Critical Mediocrity

Afterlife (1996): The Wasted Opportunity That Wasn’t

Upon release, Afterlife (1996) received generally favorable reviews (75% on GameRankings). Next Generation praised its options and complexity. Computer Gaming World called it “a well-designed simulation” but slammed its “completely inadequate documentation.” Macworld gave it “Best Simulation Game” of 1996. However, it was a commercial failure. Stemmle admitted sales did not cover its small budget. The reasons are clear: the game was brutally difficult to learn without the rare official strategy guide (scanned and uploaded only in 2022). Its humor was an acquired taste, and its systems were inverted from SimCity norms, punishing rather than rewarding player intuition. It became a cult classic among a tiny subset of simulation fans who prized its depth and satire. Its legacy is one of great potential only partially realized. Richard Cobbett’s 2014 reappraisal for PC Gamer called it “a unique idea trapped in little more than a clone of SimCity 2000” and “a wasted opportunity.” Yet, Chris Person’s 2023 Aftermath deep dive—completed only after 27 years—revealed its true brilliance: “complicated and counter-intuitive… wildly funny and structurally fascinating in a way that no other game is.” It influenced no direct sequels but remains a touchstone for obscure, deep simulation design. Its concepts of vibe-based evolution and theological belief systems affecting demographics remain uniquely potent.

Afterlife (2019): The VR Experiment That Fizzled

The 2019 Afterlife was met with overwhelmingly mixed-to-negative reviews. On OpenCritic, its “Top Critic Average” is 52/100, with scores ranging from 3/10 (GBAtemp) to 7.5/10 (GamePitt). The consensus, articulated by Matt Jordan (5/10), is that it provides “an impressive framework… devalued by the uneven melodrama.” Critics praised its ambitious seamless branching and poignant story moments but universally criticized its unclear interaction model, low-fidelity video compression, and lack of traditional gameplay hooks. On Metacritic, it holds no metascore due to insufficient reviews, a sign of its obscurity. It has no meaningful legacy within the VR industry, which has largely moved towards more interactive, less passive experiences. Its true impact may be as a cautionary tale about the limits of gaze-based narrative in VR—a proof that seamless branching can feel disempowering. It is remembered, if at all, as a competent but unspectacular entry in the “VR movie” subgenre, saved only by its subject matter and low price.

---

7. Conclusion: Two Visions of the Beyond

To judge these two games by the same metric is a profound error. They are not competitors but philosophical opposites.

The 1996 Afterlife is a monumental, flawed masterpiece. It is the ultimate “player-as-Demiurge” fantasy, a game that understands the god game not as omnipotence but as bureaucratic, ironic management. Its genius lies in its structural comedy—the mechanics themselves are the jokes (long, winding roads of suffering; the superiority of 2×2 zones). Its flaws are equally monumental: an abysmal user experience, opaque systems, and a tone that could alienate as easily as it delighted. It is a game for masochistic theorists, a deeply interactive satire that requires a strategy guide to crack. Its place in history is that of a brilliant aberration—a LucasArts experiment that proved simulation could be absurdist and profound, but also that complexity without clarity is a dead end.

The 2019 Afterlife is a poignant, limited experiment. It asks a beautiful, simple question: what if you could be the silent ghost at the feast of grief? Its interaction model is theoretically elegant but practically frustrating. The seamless branching is a marvel of directorial design in VR, but it removes the crucial element of player intent. You are not choosing; you are being carried by the tide of your own gaze. Its artistic success is mixed—the performances are raw, the concept is moving, but the technical execution (video quality, lack of affordances) undermines immersion. It is a proof-of-concept for emotional VR cinema, not a sustainable game design. Its legacy is one of unfulfilled promise.

Together, they present a complete spectrum of the “afterlife” game concept. The 1996 title posits an afterlife as a system to be optimized, a satirical mirror of our own civic and moral bureaucracies. The 2019 title presents an afterlife as an emotional space to be witnessed, a quiet, passive exploration of human loss. One is about building ironic purgatories; the other is about inhabiting a silent witness. One is wildly funny; the other is earnestly sad. One is remembered by a few die-hards as a brilliant mess; the other is a forgotten comma in VR’s evolution.

Final Verdict:
* Afterlife (1996): 9/10 as a cult artifact, 6/10 as a playable game. A brilliant, broken, essential curiosity for students of game design, but an often-frustrating experience for anyone seeking polish. Its complexity is its soul and its downfall.
* Afterlife (2019): 5/10. A noble but flawed narrative experiment whose innovative interaction model is undermined by poor execution and a lack of meaningful gameplay. Worth a single, curious playthrough for its concept, but not for its execution.

The true tragedy is that the 1996 game’s profound systemic satire on morality and bureaucracy remains largely unplayed, while the 2019 game’s sincere emotional portrait of grief fades into the noise of a thousand VR “experiences.” They are two ghosts of game design potential, haunting different corners of the medium’s history—one a demon of complexity, the other an angel of simplicity, both ultimately struggling to be truly heard.