The end of the world is just the beginning in After Inc., the follow-up to apocalyptic strategy hit Plague Inc. Whereas the original game tasked you with decimating the globe as a deadly disease, After Inc. puts you in charge of rebuilding civilisation from the ground up, starting with the United Kingdom. Are you up to the job?

To give humanity a fighting chance, you’ll need to carefully manage resources such as food, water and wood – as well as look after the strength and morale of the people living in your settlement – to construct essential buildings, scavenge materials and research technology.

“Make sure you’ve got your resources stored up and you’ve got people happy before you try to grow,” the game’s designer James Vaughan tells us. “When you’ve played it quite a lot, it can be quite fun to try and grow your settlement a lot faster, but you’re really kind of surfing the edge of a wave – if you get it wrong, it all collapses into disaster and chaos.”

As your outpost grows and attracts more occupants, you’ll have to establish a good quality of life for everyone. But dangerous zombies still roam the land, hindering your exploration and expansion. Even inside the safety of your walls, you’ll encounter numerous threats, from food poisoning caused by spoiled food to the risk of fire if your fuel stocks overflow. It’ll take tactical thinking and some hard decisions to make it through.

After Inc. pits you against a number of different scenarios, gradually introducing more complex gameplay elements and greater challenges to overcome, without becoming overcomplicated.

“We set out to make a kind of game that doesn’t really exist at the moment,” says Vaughan. “We want a satisfying 20-minute strategic city-builder experience. If you increase the scale too much, that’s not really very fun. This is not a game of micromanagement.”

As you unlock new leaders for your settlements by completing missions, you’ll want to choose carefully between their unique effects, many of which offer significant advantages in exchange for other complications. For example, you might find scouting surrounding areas easier with the roaming Scout, but ordering them to explore a specific zone will cost you extra power. The Hoarder, meanwhile, gains bonuses for keeping their resources at maximum, but suffers if they dwindle. Selecting your leader wisely can make the difference between success or failure.

UK-based developers Ndemic Creations released Plague Inc. in 2012. After Inc. takes place 50 years after the world-ending events of Plague Inc. “I always wanted to have something that looks at what would happen next in Plague Inc., imagining a world where a few people managed to survive,” says Vaughan.

The post-apocalyptic UK setting means British players will spot nods to their home country as they explore, discovering reclaimed motorways, abandoned cities and visions of iconic landmarks, including Stonehenge, transformed by the apocalyptic landscape. You’ll even be able to generate a fittingly British name for your settlement, with playful homage to zombie classics mixed in. All in all, it’s a lighter take on the end of the world than you might expect.

“We’re trying to give people little vignettes which can spur their imagination to think about what might have happened,” Vaughan says. “You’ve got this beautiful world, but it’s also quite a dangerous world. Overall, it’s a happy, optimistic place. These are the people who have a future ahead of them – if they can just manage to survive.”