{
  "id": 4868990,
  "title": "Afterworld: The First Hands-On Preview: A (Probably Too Early) Taste of Paradox’s Next Big Thing",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/01/afterworld-the-first-hands-on-preview-a-probably-too-early-taste-of",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-09-01T13:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "IGN",
    "slug": "ign",
    "url": "https://www.ign.com/articles/afterworld-the-first-hands-on-preview-a-probably-too-early-taste-of-paradoxs-next-big-thing"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "This is an early preview of Paradox's next grand strategy game, Afterworld. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic North America devastated by an unnamed cataclysm. Players rebuild the world, terraform, and develop cannibalism systems, among others. The Ancients are fascinating new characters in the game. The preview build is exceptionally early and rough around the edges, with combat not yet available for demonstration. The developers show the build to the public to gather feedback before fully developing systems. The game starts with selecting an origin for your survivor band, similar to Stellaris. Early origins include the Shelterborn, who have lived underground for 100 years. Band traditions, values, and customs influence how players rebuild and interact with the wasteland and rival factions.",
  "summary": "Typical for a Paradox game, Afterworld contains systems upon systems upon systems. It would be impossible to cover them all in the scope of this preview, from sending ranger teams into devastated cities to recover old-world tech, to equipping armies with bikes and dune buggies to bring road war to the wasteland while having to maintain supply lines for fuel and ammo. It's a lot to come to grips…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}