AFTERLIFE INFO

       Article taken from the Internet by Jess Truter

These days, Mike Stemmle, known to LucasArts fans for his work on
Sam & Max Hit the Road and other classic games, is a little, well,
preoccupied.

"Reincarnation, souls, the hereafter -- what's it all about?" he
wonders as he relaxes in front of his office computer surrounded by
a collection of the coolest toys not found at your local Toys R Us.
But Mike isn't pondering the imponderable, and he's not in the
throes of existential angst.  In fact, he doesn't even seem to be
the slightest bit depressed.  The fact is, he's busy designing and
programming his next game - Afterlife -- scheduled to hit the
stores in the first half of 1996.

A longtime fan of simulations ("sims"), Mike has wasted countless
company hours building, maintaining and destroying hundreds of
cities, worlds, theme parks and ant farms.  Somewhere along the
line, he had an epiphany: All of today's sim games are grounded in
what we laughingly refer to as "reality."  Reality carries the
baggage of built-in rules and assumptions, like "it's a bad idea to
put nuclear power plants next to residential zones" and "trains
have a difficult time going over mountains."

But what if the player were faced with a different situation, where
the rules weren't necessarily known beforehand?  What if the player
were faced with managing, for instance, the afterlife?

AND ON THAT DAY WAS BORN AFTERLIFE

"I knew that I wanted to build a sim game," says Mike, "but I also
knew that I wanted it to be different from every sim game out
there. Afterlife is, if nothing else, extremely different; in fact,
it's unabashedly weird."  Afterlife is the first and only sim game
that puts players in charge of the Great Beyond, the Hereafter, the
proverbial Undiscovered Countries: Heaven and Hell.


"Think of yourself as a regional manager for the Great Beyond,"
explains Mike.  "Your mission is to accommodate the needs of the
wandering souls of a particular (alien) planet, according to the
beliefs of each individual soul.  If you keep your souls happy,
then everything goes along just swell.  Fail to meet their
afterlife needs, and everything goes to you-know-where."

A SIM WITH A LOT OF SOUL

The player's goal in Afterlife is to build the most efficient
afterlife possible.  Employed by "The Powers That Be," players must
greet souls, tally up their good and bad deeds, and send them to
their expected rewards, each according to their beliefs.  Some
souls believe in reincarnation, so the player must build special
vehicles to take them back to the world of the living.  Others
believe that all souls go to Heaven, so the player better have
built a big enough Heaven to take care of them. As the player fully
"processes" the souls, The Powers That Be shower him with Pennies
from Heaven, allowing him to expand his afterlife even further.

With literally billions of souls to keep track of, Afterlife
doesn't subscribe to any one belief system, except for those that
affect gameplay.  "We decided early on to include both a Heaven and
a Hell in Afterlife for a couple of reasons," says Mike.  "First,
everyone's heard of Heaven and Hell, even if they don't believe in
them. Secondly, and most important, a two-plane afterlife looks
capital-c cool when it's floating on your computer screen, and it
creates a great deal of dynamic tension in the player's gameplaying
strategy."

Despite its unusual setting, the game of Afterlife is simple enough
for the beginning sim player, yet deep enough to challenge the most
hard-core empire builder. A graceful and intuitive interface will
allow players to manipulate the individual characteristics of the
game's more than 250 structures, yielding hours and hours of
frothy, sim-playing fun.

Best of all, Afterlife is jam-packed with the kind of humor people
have come to expect from LucasArts.  "You want puns, we got a
'Disco Inferno,'" says Mike.  "Topical media references?  How about
'Hellrose Place,' or 'The Real Underworld?' Want gross-out humor?
Check out 'The Bowels of Hell.' Wry commentaries on the human
condition?  Afterlife's got 'em in spades.  This game is fat with
laughs."

No game is complete without great artwork, music, and sound.
Afterlife artists, led by Sam & Max veteran Paul Mica, have created
a simulated afterlife that is both stunning and functional.

"The feel of the interface is a nifty, brassy, vintage-tech look,"
says Mike.  "And each of our tiles are like tiny little music
boxes; I'd pay forty or fifty bucks just to stare at the tiles."
There will be plenty of music (though Stairway to Heaven, Sympathy
for the Devil, and Highway to Hell have all been banned) and
practically every structure and event will have its own associated
sound.  "For hell alone, we'll probably need about 20 different
variations of 'screaming in abject terror'," laughs Mike.



THE FINAL JUDGEMENT: GREAT GAME, GREAT FUN"

Afterlife will be the strangest game you've ever played, but it'll
also be more fun than you can shake a halo at," says Mike.  "It's a
serious strategy game about a serious ontological topic, but done
in a lighthearted, whimsical fashion that should appeal to
everyone.  I think people will get a real kick out of it."
Afterlife will be available for PC CD-ROM in both Windows 95 and
MS-DOS versions.

This game is similar to Sim City, but instead of running a city you
have to run the afterlife. You have to manage both Heaven and Hell,
and you have to make sure all of the souls get punished or rewarded
accordingly. If you do it well, the Powers That Be will give you
Pennies From Heaven. But if you start losing souls, the Powers That
Be will take away the pennies.

James Stevens says: The player creates areas and builds structures
by using Pennies from Heaven. Money is gained by SOULs entering the
afterlife and being properly cared for. If the player needs to
create more of a particular zone, he or she will be informed by
"SOUL spikes" that indicate that the soul in question cannot find
the necessary punishment/pleasure and will therefore be heading for
another afterlife. The player loses pennies when this happens equal
to the amount gained for processing that SOUL plus a penalty.
Therefore, it is important that the player keep an eye on how much
territory of a particular sort is needed. Additionally, it is
possible in both Heaven and Hell to create generic zones that
punish or praise for any and all sins or virtues .

One of the more amusing aspects of the game is looking at the
various punishments/pleasures that are created in Hell and Heaven.
Each of the zoned areas has the potential for several different
types of structure. For instance, the punishments in Hell for
gluttony include Taco Hell where food of temperatures around 700
degrees Celsius are forced down the ever-regenerating throats of
the guilty; Stickys, where tasty (but very sticky) food is served,
and there is nothing to drink; and the E Coli Hut, which can be
summed up with the words "cow sushi."

Gameplay is in many ways remarkably similar to SimCity and related
games.  SOULs, for instance, cannot simply wander around on unzoned
territory. They need roads, so one is not freed from the necessity
of planning a good transportational infrastructure, even in the
hereafter. Additionally, more than simply zoning for sins or
virtues is needed. The player must create a variety of structures
in both Heaven and Hell to keep the populace satisfied with its
collective afterlife. First and foremost is a gate to enter both
afterworlds. From there, the player can develop structures to train
the workforce of angels and devils (as well as give them places to
work and recreate). One can extend influence to the planet of the
EMBOs, making them more evil or less evil to increase the traffic
in one or the other halves of the afterlife.  Additionally, to
combat those SOUL spikes, the player will eventually be able to
create a Limbo to store SOULs in before processing them.

No game of this nature would be complete without a list of
potential disasters, and the ones included in Afterlife are of a
particularly hideous nature. Witness, for instance, Bats Out of
Hell, Hell Freezes Over, Birds of Paradise, My Blue Heaven and the
dreaded Disco Inferno. As with most sims, the player also receives
bonus structures for reaching particular milestones.  Afterlife
will feature the ability to control literally millions and
potentially billions of SOULs as the population of both afterworlds
increases. Remember to keep an open mind, it's all just a game.
One hopes that the afterlife of our world is maintained with such
attention to detail.

YOUR AFTERLIFE: ANGELS, DEVILS AND THE SOULS WHO LOVE THEM

Goodhalo and Jasper Wormsworth are a couple of hard workin' stiffs
who just happen to have very high-profile jobs. They are,
respectively, the angelic and devilish guides found in Afterlife,
the slightly twisted world-building simulation from LucasArts.
It's Aria and Jasper who help players along by keeping them abreast
of their successes and failures. They also give helpful advice when
appropriate.  We sought and found Aria and Jasper to get answers to
some of the more typically asked questions about Afterlife (the
game, that is).

The Adventurer: What is the game's goal?

Aria: To build a heaven.

Jasper: To build a hell.

Aria: Okay, to build them both, really. You see, souls are randomly
generated from the planet below and players have to direct them to
their proper rewards and punishments. Players zone areas for the
seven deadly sins (in hell) and their respective virtues (in
heaven). It becomes a kind of intense balancing act of keeping the
souls happy.

Jasper: Yes. I just love telling people where they can go.

The Adventurer: What are Omnibolges and Love Domes?

Jasper: Banned in 38 states!


Aria: Jasper! Seriously, when a game hits the one billion SOUL mark
(SOUL stands for Stuff Of Unending Life), players are awarded with
Omnibolges (in hell) and Love Domes (in heaven). These
sims-within-a-sim let players stretch out gameplay for a virtual
eternity.

The Adventurer: What are some of the disasters found in Afterlife?

Jasper: I'd say the fact that you're there is disaster enough.

Aria: Jasper, if you don't take this interview more seriously,
there will be hell to pay.

Jasper: Don't you mean "hell to play?"

The Adventurer: Folks, please.

Aria: Sorry. In heaven some of the disasters include the Hell in a
Handbasket, in which a giant basket comes flying over a building,

grabs it up and sends it to hell. Then there's the Bird of
Paradise, dropping I-don't-want-to-say all over your buildings.

Jasper: Downstairs we have the Heaven Nose, which is kind of like
that basket contraption Aria described except it's a huge nose that
floats over buildings, takes a whiff and sends the building to
heaven. We also have that crazy Disco Inferno. Have you seen this?
From out of nowhere, a giant, polyester-clad disco dancer from
you-know-where comes traipsing through, destroying everything. I'd
say we kill the thing, but, well, it's already dead. Then there's
something I thought I'd never see: Hell Freezes Over. This is where
entire zones can be frozen and made unusable in a matter of
seconds.

Aria: And if you don't do well in the game at all, you'll be
visited by the Four Surfers of the Apocalypso who ride demonic
waves bearing unspeakable destruction and devastation in their
path. They're actually really nice guys once you get to know them.

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