Beginner's guide

Surviving the Aftermath is a game about pushing through the odds in a horrible situation. The world as we know it is gone, and it's your task to pick up the pieces and rebuild. The game starts small from just a handful of survivors and resources, finally expanding to automated factories and relatively comfortable living.

Pregame

The first steps in the game are about tailoring the experience to your liking. Pregame setup allows you to alter the amount of initial resources, tweak the challenge level and customize your colony's name and flag. You can also enable or disable the tutorial, which explains the game's basic concepts from building to scavenging and exploring.

Suggestions of setting everything to low difficulty for your first game... you will still get defeated as things get out of control and you acquire experience.

Basic survival

Once the game starts, you're tasked with taking care of the very basic needs of the colonists. First, make sure you have enough water for everyone, as dehydration is a deadly condition. Next, provide them with a sufficient amount of houses to live in. Different shelters have different costs and benefits, so spend your initial resources wisely. Once that's done, it's time to top up that food storage. There are several different options to gather edibles ranging from picking nearby berries to fishing and trapping. All have their pros and cons, so take your time checking each one out to decide what to do first and keep expanding the production as the colony grows.

Task list:

• Secure water sources
• Build shelters
• Start food production
• Scavenge basic resources
• Build the gate

Out into the world

Once you've satisfied the basic needs of your people, it's time to peer onward beyond the confines of your Colony. To do this, you must build the gate. It acts not only as a defense against aggressors but as a beacon of sorts, signaling protection, salvation and security to other survivors of the wasteland. It also unlocks the world map. These survivor groups will be the main source of new colonists for you, so be prepared to welcome them if you can support them. With survivor groups come specialists - your wasteland survival and exploration experts. This colorful group of scouts, fighters and scientists is responsible for taking advantage of the world map. The map's divided into sectors you must scout first to uncover the abandoned locations within. These locations still hold resources valuable to your colony, including building materials, medicine, science points and more.

Task list:

• Take in survivors
• Enlist specialists
• Scout sectors
• Scavenge world map locations
• Find research locations and unlock new tech
• Survive the catastrophes

Powering up

While exploring the map, you're sure to come across components. These highly valuable parts are the backbone of energy production, which in turn will create more efficient and secure ways to produce food, materials and so on. You'll transition from wood to metal, and your colony should be growing in size, too. Specialists haul valuable goods back to base and combat occasional bandits for their loot. By now you've grown accustomed to various catastrophes and disasters and know how to cope with them. Power plants are costly, but provide the energy for advanced buildings like pollution-clearing environmental stations, fallout-proof greenhouses and efficient bore wells. You're climbing the tech tree branch by branch on your way to the top. Basic material production is secured and not reliant on just scavenging.

Task list:

• Find components to build power plants
• Increase colony population
• Endure catastrophes
• Unlock new technologies
• Secure long-term food, water and resource production
• Build outposts

In to the future

Once the colony is brimming with energy and the food storages are filled up, it's time to look past the present.

Task list:

• Play the game, check new updates and enjoy!