Florian Sirieix

The very first idea for After Us dates back to November 2016. Imaginarium was still being finalised. I wasn't known in the games world, far from it. And one day, I had this idea for a mechanic: you choose the order in which to line up cards to create links between elements on the cards' edges. The first version was very basic and not at all original: you combined a spaceship with a planet. Each of the two card types had 3 cut-up icons, and lining them up earned more or less resources/bonuses/VP. Then I thought I could add more cards and play with their arrangement, instead of only 2 cards to line up. I really liked that idea. A kind of puzzle. You create resources on the top row, transform them into more advanced resources on the middle row, then validate objectives with the bottom row to win. A lot has changed since that first idea, but the structure is still there in the final game: AFTER US.

At the time I'm still a young designer. I need others to validate the idea to keep working on it. The public, but mostly fellow designers and friends in publishing. Johan Benvenuto, with whom I started working back then on L'Île de Pan and Cowboy Bebop, also likes the idea. We decide for a while to work on the game together, but I finally prefer to keep the project solo, feeling the need to keep control of my mechanic.

I then take it to conventions to test it. I notably presented it at the Alchimie du jeu festival in May 2017 — and I sadly traumatised Benoit Turpin. Yes, you know the 4 cards you line up? In that version of the game, you could go up to 9. That was a bit much. At the festival I also showed it to Clément and Sébastien from Catch'up Games, who found the mechanic very interesting but the game far from finished. They asked if I'd be OK with working together on the project without signing a contract right away. I happily agreed.

In October 2018, we finally signed a contract with Catch'up for the «Golems» game. Almost 5 years later, the game finally hits the shops.

In November 2017, while out for a run, I thought we could make a much simpler version of the game. That's how I got the idea for «Zoo Run»: replace the icons with animal heads and tails.

I pitched the game at the Paris festival (PEL) in 2018 to Aurélie Raphaël, and it came out in 2019 in the LOKI line — what efficiency! It's 2023 and 4 years after release, it's still selling rather well (it was even on the Spiel des Jahres recommended list in 2020).

So we set out to create — mainly with Clément (at Catch'up, Clément and Sébastien each manage their own projects, constantly consulting each other, but authors have a single main contact) — a game built on the card mechanic everyone had enjoyed.

We have an original resource-production engine. Yes, but then… now we have to think about what comes next: what do we do with these resources? My base prototype had a pretty banal theme and goal: build golems that activate artefacts, a sort of VP objective.

For 3 years we paired the mechanic with several styles of games. We didn't really know, at the time, which audience to target, what play length we wanted, or how central the mechanic should be relative to others: make it the core mechanic or a secondary one? So we made prototypes for territory conquest, cooperative play, collection, racing… in total, more than 20 totally different game versions.

The project's code name stayed «Golems». But we explored many worlds. We even tested, at one point, a version in the Mad Max universe, where each card (today's monkeys) represented a desert run, and you had to plan your expedition by choosing card placement.

There was also a version based on a journey to the East, in the Chinese legend of the Monkey King. That theme wasn't kept for After Us, but having done a lot of research on it, I got really interested in the Sun Wukong legend (in Japanese: Son Goku) and used that to make another game — a small 2-player game co-authored with Cédric Lefebvre (planned for 2024).

Back to Golems. Every version had its flaws: a weak theme, an overly complex mechanic, a too-slow feel… Until Clément proposed a mechanic we hadn't yet adapted to our prototype: deckbuilding.

This version was exactly what we had been looking for from the start. We were really satisfied. But then, to finalise the cohesion of the mechanics, we had to find a theme. And that wasn't easy. The constraints were:

• 4 cards interact, and you can place them in a chosen order.
• there are resource exchanges between cards (the transformations).

An image by illustrator Zariel (zariel.fr) gave me the idea — and then the desire — to play with monkeys instead of characters. So I did research on the best-known monkey species and their diets, to lay the foundations for the final game.

I love this research phase. Even though for this game it was fairly quick and basic. Still, I learned a few things about our simian friends — notably that they don't only eat bananas, and that diet varies wildly between monkey species. We tried to respect this in the game's creation.

The core mechanic is set: you have a deck, you draw 4 cards on your turn and arrange them to collect and transform resources. You buy new ones to grow your deck. However, the cards are too complex to read and analyse for a «classic» deckbuilding game with a card river. So we decided cards would be face-down. You know what's in your deck as a whole, but you have to optimise your play according to the card's parameters, which you discover after the purchase. The absence of a river means an absence of interaction and of the classic «damn, they took the card I wanted».

After a lot of discussion, the decision was made. Too bad for interaction — the game's strength is the card «puzzle». And so, let's push the concept even further: let's play simultaneously. That heavily shaped what came next, since simultaneity has its own pros and cons.

• + You can play 1 to 6 players.
• + Game length is bounded regardless of player count (around 45 min).
• − A lack of interaction.

Interaction is hard to build into a simultaneous resource-management game. On top of that, the reward of optimising your play is pleasant, but the frustration of seeing an opponent ruin that organisation would be too strong. So we limited interaction to two aspects:

• The game is a race. First past the post wins, and you must keep an eye on the central board or risk spending too long building an engine that won't have time to fire.
• The recruitment-choice tokens: we called them «Race for the monkey» tokens. You've probably spotted the inspiration. You pick an action for yourself and benefit from your neighbours' actions. The token mechanic is close to Race for the Galaxy's, but you'll find differences inherent to After Us and its mechanic.

For us, the game's positive interaction (I benefit from my opponents without harming them) was obvious — both mechanically and thematically: why would monkeys repeat humans' mistakes? (I'll let you ponder that over a nice cup of tea.)

In game design we often talk about the 95/5 ratio. Doing the first 95% of a game takes 5% of the design time. The final 5% take 95% of development. While not necessarily true for every game, for this one it's an undeniable observation.

Since we were creating a deckbuilding game with face-down cards, aimed at experienced/expert players, we needed the game to be perfectly balanced: no player should lose because of a randomly drawn card. Otherwise you might as well play Exploding Kittens.

Moreover, during playtests we noticed that one strategy (choosing to play a specific monkey type or a combo of two types) often dominated. We'd modify it, but another would become more powerful. We weren't 100% satisfied with the overall balance.

Clément then called in Frédéric Guérard: an extraordinary mathematician and computer scientist who managed (I still don't know how) to generate an Excel spreadsheet with ALL the game's data interconnected. Each card has a weighted value. Since everything is linked, improving one card shifts all the others (based on power, type…). With this brilliant tool, we balanced not only all the cards against each other, but also all the types (and therefore the game's strategies).

Later, we thought about the game's goal: what do the victory points represent?

If the monkeys are evolving, it's because humans leave them alone. And the best explanation is… there are no more humans. So we play monkeys who develop. Who develop collective intelligence. There are our victory points.

«2083. Humanity has been extinct for several decades, leaving only faint traces of its passage on Earth. Over time, nature has reclaimed its rights. In this reborn world, monkeys continue their evolution. They gather in tribes, develop, tame the objects left by humans, and advance in their quest for knowledge. You lead one of these tribes and must guide it on the path of collective intelligence.»

When we imagined the story, we really realised we had just created «Planet of the Apes: the board game». In a universe close to the famous video game «The Last of Us». We brainstormed titles: of course we started with jokes (Ape-ocalypse, Ape of you, Orang-Outang Gone with the Wind, Monkey Run, Chainsaw Macaque…) before focusing on the keywords: the end of the world, and monkeys. Monkey Reign… After humanity… AFTER US.

For illustrations, Vincent Dutrait. I've been a fan of his work for a while and I love the idea. On top of that, this illustration was in his portfolio:

He liked the proposed title, and a few moments later he sent this to Catch'Up:

The back-and-forth with Vincent Dutrait was genuinely enriching. He has a very effective vision of the game, thinks about ergonomics (visual readability) and colours as a whole. The match between resources and colours (blue flowers, orange fruit, black seeds), player colours — everything is meticulously considered. And my god, those monkeys… they're magnificent!!!

And now, After Us, it's your turn to play. We hope the game will bring you as much pleasure as we had developing it. In the meantime, I'm already thinking about new monkeys — you never know…