Paradox Interactive made several mistakes, so we already know what the Swedish publisher was going to announce at Gamescom.

Paradox Interactive accidentally revealed the title and concept of its next major original game ahead of the official announcement. Users found the title, Afterworld, early on in the company’s official forum among the filters for unannounced games, as well as in the description of a private Discord server. According to the leaked information, the new game is a large-scale, original strategy game with survival elements in a post-apocalyptic setting. Players will take control of a tribe of survivors, explore ancient technologies, establish settlements in the wasteland, and engage in political struggles and military conflicts with hostile factions.

The leak disrupted the publisher’s planned promotional campaign, which had been running on social media for several days leading up to the release. Previously, the developers released short teasers featuring apocalyptic scenes from their earlier projects, such as a ruined castle from Crusader Kings 3 and an exploding spaceship from Stellaris. These teasers prepared the audience for the announcement of this new direction. Players have jokingly described the project as a hybrid of Civilization and Fallout. The full debut trailer for Afterworld is expected to be unveiled on August 25 during Gamescom Opening Night Live.

Afterworld received additional development resources following the cancellation of Life by You, a life simulator that was shut down due to production issues and delays (as we reported at the time). The goal of this new IP is to restore the publisher’s reputation after a series of negative public responses to the questionable quality of certain expansions and the use of generative AI in Stellaris. For Paradox, the release of Afterworld is an important attempt to expand its extensive strategy game portfolio beyond classic historical and sci-fi genres.

Given Paradox’s track record, it wouldn’t be surprising if Afterworld ends up with a lot of DLCs.

Source: GameGPU, Reddit