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After our recent brush with a worldwide pandemic, there are now several stories running through the media that are dealing with, and riffing on, what it was like for us all to live through it. Some of these stories are a reflection on society, showing the realistic effects of lockdowns and the mental health of the general public.
On the other hand, The World After uses the idea of a global pandemic, a fictional one, in a very different way. Mixing full motion video with point-and-click fun and a crazy sci-fi story, I donned the mask once more and dived in.
French media company Burning Sunset comes to us with The World After; a story focusing on a protagonist called Vincent. He is a writer who during a global pandemic decides to escape Paris and rent a house in the French countryside. We see him wake up, haunted by weird dreams, before going about his daily routine. He visits an alcoholic friend, walks around an empty village, and then decides to head off to visit an ancient ruin of a castle. Here he finds a strange briefcase with an even stranger message, one about meeting at a gate, a gun, and a strange red button. Pressing the button turns day into night, and night into day. Then a monster appears…
The story and set-up of The World After feel like a great episode of Doctor Who or some fantastical 1970’s TV show in that genre. I liked the premise, as well as the way the game takes you across a limited number of locations, using the portable time switcher to good effect.
The dialogue is okay, but I think the translation from French to English sees it lose some of the nuance. Throughout the game, you also can find some QR codes hidden around the locations. Scanning these will reveal some other more global parts of the story, which examine a sort of conspiracy theory and a radical group that hints at widespread regime change. I like these extra elements of the story, as well as the different endings you can find.
Gameplay wise, The World After is mainly an FMV game – you have the hero in the frame and can click on a directional arrow on the screen to trigger the next screen or the travel footage of getting to a new area. Sometimes the directional arrows are hard to see and easy to miss, but on the whole it’s fine.
And then the game has you talking to characters on your travels. There are dialogue trees but nothing to change the ending, it’s just a case of exhausting all options.
The World After is also a bit of a point-and-click adventure, as well as a puzzle solver. You have that day changing device which makes certain things only available at night-time, as well as the same for the day. So you might have a conversation with someone in the day, which might be different in the night. Or as dark falls, that character will be tucked up in bed letting you snoop around without being caught. I liked this mechanic a lot.
The World After looks good and has a high-quality of design in its sets and locations. I wonder if they did film during the actual pandemic, because they have great access to some empty locations outside. And some of the special effects have a B-movie quality to them, fitting in brilliantly with the story. When you’ve completed the game you get access to a well designed interactive comic book too; one that the developers used as a template for making the game. Voice-over work and sound are all fine, but if you ask me, it’s best to use the original French voice actors and subs.
I am a big fan of the FMV scene and love how we are seeing different types of games pushing what can be done with the genre. Where it used to be nothing but binary choices, we now have point-and-click and puzzle-solving to be had. The day changing device in The World After is clever and some of the puzzles take a while to work out. And whilst the transition across languages hasn’t helped the writing in places, you should enjoy your time with The World After.