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Paradox Interactive has addressed comparisons between its upcoming grand strategy game, Afterworld, and the Fallout series. Content designer Luke Bean clarified that the title draws more inspiration from the Bronze Age collapse than from retro-futuristic post-apocalyptic tropes. In this setting, the inhabitants of North America view the pre-collapse era as a mysterious, ancient empire, struggling to understand why such a technologically advanced society perished.
Gameplay involves defining a tribe's identity by either embracing or rejecting the remnants of past American ideologies and religions. Bean described this cultural rediscovery as akin to writing a new people's history. Factions range from descendants of the US Pacific Fleet and Hawaiian evacuees to groups like the Amish, Mormons, and various Indigenous nations.
A core mechanic is the procedural simulation of 100 years of calamity before each campaign begins. Map generation selects from various regional disasters, ensuring that the state of the world and the scars left upon it differ with every playthrough. This variability means that the specific geopolitical landscape players encounter is never fixed.
While the game explores serious themes of societal reconstruction and critique, it maintains a distinct tone. Bean noted that tribes can include doom cultists, and the game features unconventional factions, such as those dedicated to trains, providing a comic-book undertow to the experience.
