New post-apocalyptic Paradox grand strategy game Afterworld draws inspiration from Hearts of Iron 4, but aims to suit a broader audience.
Afterworld is Paradox Interactive's first all-new grand strategy game series in quite some time, and like Stellaris before it the team is stepping away from the historical grounding of its other names to create something original. Set in the wasteland of a post-apocalyptic future America, you 'ease in' with the essentials of survival before expanding, growing in strength, and potentially making allies. Ultimately, you seek to stand against the Ancients, immortal leaders powered by ancient technology who have ruled since before the fall. At Gamescom 2026, we sat down with Afterworld's Game Director Dan Lind to learn more.
It's been ten years since Paradox launched Stellaris, Lind remarks, and the developer is trying to create another game worthy of sitting alongside its existing favorites. The studio has crafted numerous pillars of the grand strategy space in names such as Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron, and Victoria. Like with Stellaris, Lind believes Afterworld is "different enough" to join that pack rather than disrupt it. "It's not there to take any of the other spots, it's a different experience."
Starting fresh meant thinking differently than just crafting another sequel, of course. "Before this I worked on Hearts of Iron 4 - there you start very much from a perspective of, 'What did people like and not like in the previous game?'" He says it gave the team a better sense of freedom. "It's much more of a focus on the kind of game you wanted to make, without a lot of external pressure on that side."
Lind's pursuit of this Mad Max-esque dystopian future was to chase "a combination of history and the 'perceived reality' of Stellaris." You've got an established world that players are familiar with, but "can't fully trust what's there, what's changed." The result is that "the more you know about the real world, the cooler it will be," but at the same time "you don't know what to expect, there's a bit of interest in the discovery."
Rather than playing an abstract country or a specific character, your faction is "a group of people who share values." Lind says the team initially considered Crusader Kings-style characters, but decided "it didn't feel right for a post-apocalyptic game that's about how society is developed." You have the chance to decide your story, he says: "Some [players] are probably going to be like, 'I'm going to get all the nukes and blow everything up again,' and some are like, 'I will try to terraform the poisoned land and turn it green again.'"
Certain factions, such as those ruling Ancients, can typically be thought of as "roadblocks, in the sense they are trying to take it in a direction you don't want." It doesn't have to be that way, however, as there is the potential to align yourself with their strategies and goals. "The idea is to not completely 100% fill the world, because then there's no space for the player story," Lind remarks. "There are rigid things and plans in motion there, but they allow for a lot of space for the player to alter things in between, or alter the course of history, or the future."
Lind carried over "a lot of learnings from Hearts of Iron," including ways to "automate but stay very tangible and realistic - the berries get picked, they turn into wine. Someone has to build the gun that this guy is going to put on his bike. Stuff like this." At the same time, Afterworld's mission system is designed to make it easy to establish goals such as asking you to deal with a specific region. "That's a development on top of Hearts of Iron's more rigid system, trying to be smarter and with less friction to use."
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.pcgamesn.com/afterworld/interview-apocalypse-grand-strategy-game
