I figure since nobody has commented - not to mention that I'm going to be adding quite a few things to this - I figured I'd comment.
Afterlife is what I would consider a 'successful failure' - taken together, the concept is great, the execution is generally good, but when everything is tabulated, you can't help but think slightly poor of the overall product.
There are a great many positive qualities to Afterlife. I don't think the concept of SimHeaven and SimHell has been tried before or after this game, so doing it was a great starting point. To my knowledge, no 'Sim' game has since tried a bi-planar approach of running 2 'cities'.
The rewards and punishments are often funny and interesting, although Heaven's rewards typically seem blander than their Hell counterparts. Having played Black & White, and hearing development stories, I can perfectly understand the comparative difficulty of designing "Heavenly" things as opposed to Hellish things.
A great deal of the credit for the quality of the game has to be on the voice actors behind your angel and demon assistants. While Aria occasionally sounds like little more than a typical Angel, Milton James provides a solid voice for a demon that is not altogether demonic. Jasper personifies a working trait in this game - the Great Beyond not as some serious thing, but a simple business.
The humor in the game as a whole is excellent.
However, there are some flaws to the game, in general.
Most notably is the micromanagement system in the game. Buildings must be calibrated based on the type of souls currently occupying it, lest the building does not grow to larger, more effective buildings. To fix this, there are 2 options - either pay large amounts of money to auto calibrate, or personally calibrating thousands of buildings. With this and more, Afterlife is a game you'll spend a large amount of time at the slower speeds - the faster the game runs, the more difficult it is to keep track of a myriad of things.
Another flaw/benefit is in how the game treats both planes differently.
As you'd expect, Hell is supposed to be the Anti-Simcity: Less diverse, long roads, Bad Vibes, etc. The game is easier as time progresses, as natural Simcity ideals will benefit the improvements on it. If a ton of Bad Souls enters Hell, and expects to be punished for Green, putting a large amount of Envy punishments on the map is perfectly fine.
Heaven, on the other hand, wants small roads, diversity, and Good vibes. While this seems easy, it isn't. Eventually, your Heavenly assistant will complain that your Heaven is crowded, your roads are overtaxed, and your rewards are not diverse enough for proper growth. Heaven is most difficult when you're going broke trying to put diverse reward zones, and the game sends you 100,000 Good Souls who all want a single color reward. Either you lose money by not providing those zones, or never see them evolve from the most basic of buildings, because there's only 1 type of reward for miles.
That said, however, Afterlife is a rare, but extremely fun game.
Afterlife is what I would consider a 'successful failure' - taken together, the concept is great, the execution is generally good, but when everything is tabulated, you can't help but think slightly poor of the overall product.
There are a great many positive qualities to Afterlife. I don't think the concept of SimHeaven and SimHell has been tried before or after this game, so doing it was a great starting point. To my knowledge, no 'Sim' game has since tried a bi-planar approach of running 2 'cities'.
The rewards and punishments are often funny and interesting, although Heaven's rewards typically seem blander than their Hell counterparts. Having played Black & White, and hearing development stories, I can perfectly understand the comparative difficulty of designing "Heavenly" things as opposed to Hellish things.
A great deal of the credit for the quality of the game has to be on the voice actors behind your angel and demon assistants. While Aria occasionally sounds like little more than a typical Angel, Milton James provides a solid voice for a demon that is not altogether demonic. Jasper personifies a working trait in this game - the Great Beyond not as some serious thing, but a simple business.
The humor in the game as a whole is excellent.
However, there are some flaws to the game, in general.
Most notably is the micromanagement system in the game. Buildings must be calibrated based on the type of souls currently occupying it, lest the building does not grow to larger, more effective buildings. To fix this, there are 2 options - either pay large amounts of money to auto calibrate, or personally calibrating thousands of buildings. With this and more, Afterlife is a game you'll spend a large amount of time at the slower speeds - the faster the game runs, the more difficult it is to keep track of a myriad of things.
Another flaw/benefit is in how the game treats both planes differently.
As you'd expect, Hell is supposed to be the Anti-Simcity: Less diverse, long roads, Bad Vibes, etc. The game is easier as time progresses, as natural Simcity ideals will benefit the improvements on it. If a ton of Bad Souls enters Hell, and expects to be punished for Green, putting a large amount of Envy punishments on the map is perfectly fine.
Heaven, on the other hand, wants small roads, diversity, and Good vibes. While this seems easy, it isn't. Eventually, your Heavenly assistant will complain that your Heaven is crowded, your roads are overtaxed, and your rewards are not diverse enough for proper growth. Heaven is most difficult when you're going broke trying to put diverse reward zones, and the game sends you 100,000 Good Souls who all want a single color reward. Either you lose money by not providing those zones, or never see them evolve from the most basic of buildings, because there's only 1 type of reward for miles.
That said, however, Afterlife is a rare, but extremely fun game.
