Survival games can be difficult. Fighting against the elements and enemies leads to difficult situations and often a dreaded “Game Over” screen. A new development in recent years, survival real-time-strategy (RTS) games have taken city sims into interesting new directions, and have encouraged the growth of a multitude of “horde strategy” RTS games. The player must build a city, manage the economy, build units, and fight against events and huge amounts of enemies. A new game of this genre, still in early access on Steam, is Age of Darkness: Final Stand. Placing you in charge of a small force of soldiers in a land shrouded in mist and covered in crawly scary enemies, Age of Darkness has beaten me down multiple times and I haven’t managed to fully live longer than a few weeks. Despite that, I find myself continuing to boot up games with new plans, trying to find better tactics, or using a different faction to maybe survive a little longer.

Gameplay

Developed by Playside and published by Team17, Age of Darkness: Final Stand is a dark fantasy survival RTS based on the safety of light and playing on our human fear of the unknown in the darkness. Growing from a keep and with only a few units, the player’s goal is to expand for more resources and population, while regularly fighting off huge hordes of monsters on Death Nights. These Death Nights occur every few days and nights and each one is harder and has more enemies than the last, so there is constantly a sense of desperation to every action and expansion.

With an engine called Swarmtech enabling up to 70,000 units on screen at once, you can imagine the terror that can quickly take hold seeing an army of horrifying creatures crawling from The Veil. Being able to build another ballista tower can be the difference between the walls holding and an army of nightmares butchering everyone, and that feeling is constant even when you manage to hold them at bay for a night. While Age of Darkness is still in early access, it feels so polished and engages very well with the core concept of “light is safe, darkness is death”. To protect your city from The Veil, light posts must be constructed and walls built in the path of the upcoming monster-pocolypse while soldiers must be mustered to die in front of the walls.

At the moment of this writing, the game is simply what I said in the first paragraph. Expand, defend, probably die, and start again. However, with constant updates and news releases from the developers, this title is sure to change and grow before it exits early access. Despite its early access status, with 3 unique factions and a procedurally generated map each time, there are plenty of interesting gameplay moments to be had. I have enjoyed my time with Age of Darkness so far, and I’m very excited to see how it feels when fully released!

Expectations

I came into this game expecting it to feel and act like They Are Billions, the first game that comes to mind when someone says “survival RTS”. However, much to my delight, Age of Darkness feels like a completely different game, helped in part by the hugely different scenario and gameplay mechanics. While the idea of creating a city to defend against a horde remains the same, the tactics and feelings this game evokes are nothing like the previously mentioned zombie survival strategy game. Age of Darkness, as the title suggests, thrives on the darkness that you must fight just as heartily as the monsters, and is very clearly designed and intended to feel completely different from others of this genre.

A few things that bothered me in my time with this title are a lack of multiplayer (which looks like it will be added later in early access) and the inability to create formations with your units. With each soldier being quite strong and needing to be protected on the side to survive any time at all, it seems a serious misstep on the developer’s part to leave players unable to precisely set up those soldiers. Being unable to set up good firing angles for archers or a solid defensive line with melee units bothered me to no end, and I had multiple games where I rage quit after monsters chewed through a blob of units that I couldn’t place where I wanted.

Verdict

If you like losing repeatedly, but learning from your mistakes and marveling at the great city building and hordes of enemies, pick this one up. However, as with all early access titles, this game is susceptible to being completely changed or even never coming out, so make that choice carefully. In my mind, if you have some extra cash and enjoy this game style, it will be worth it. I’m looking forward to seeing where Age of Darkness: Final Stand goes as it continues its stint in early access, and cannot wait to review the final product.

Age of Darkness: Final Stand is currently available on Steam Early Access. Check out the trailer below and let us know your thoughts in the comments!