Many years ago I was with my mother in a consignment shop. I was rifling through video games and found an interesting title called, “Afterlife”. I was already a simmer at this point and I was intrigued. I was too young to know whether or not this was related to EA/Maxis. As far as I knew this was a weird continuation of The Sims series that took them to the afterlife. Of course, I later learned they were unrelated, but at the time I really didn’t care… the experience was still enjoyable (and weird).

The following is the Wikipedia description of this strange fever dream of a game.

“Afterlife is a god game released by LucasArts in June 1996 that places the player in the role of a semi-omnipotent being known as a Demiurge, with the job of creating a functional Heaven and Hell to reward or punish the citizens of the local planet. The player does not assign citizens to their various punishments and rewards since the game does this automatically. Instead, the player creates the infrastructure (roads, zones for the various sins/virtues, reincarnation centers) that allows the afterlife to function properly. Players are accountable for the job that they do because of their bosses, The Powers That Be, check in from time to time. The player also has the assistance of two advisors—Aria Goodhalo, an angel, and Jasper Wormsworth, a demon. Aria and Jasper provide warnings when things are going wrong with the afterlife, and offer tips on how to fix the problems.”

Oddly enough, Afterlife continues to be distributed through Good Old Games and is available to download and play.