Age of Darkness: Final Stand
by Aethyna
Oct 11, 2021 |
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Genres:
StrategyGraphics:
3DLabels:
Survival , Building , Fantasy SettingPlatforms:
Publishers:
Team 17 Age of Darkness: Final Stand is a tower-defense-like strategy game where you’ll need to set up a base, gather resources, build defenses, and amass an army all just to help your people survive the Death Nights where nightmarish creatures, known as Nightmares, will swarm towards your base. Play Now Similar Games Played
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Summary
Age of Darkness: Final Stand is a tower-defense-like strategy game where you’ll need to set up a base, gather resources, build defenses, and amass an army all just to help your people survive the Death Nights where nightmarish creatures, known as Nightmares, will swarm towards your base. Similar to the hit indie game, They are Billions, you’ll get to test your skills as you try to survive waves after waves of Nightmares in a variety of difficulty levels. The game has a Scenario mode in the works as well.
Gameplay
At the moment, Age of Darkness: Final Stand only has one game mode – Survival. The other one – Scenarios – will likely be added as the game further develops during its Early Access period. The game comes in five difficulty modes, though you can also customize your own game parameters to get a custom difficulty. Naturally, the higher the difficulty, the higher your score multiplier which usually translates into a higher final score.
Before starting, you’ll also get to choose a hero out of three. In the current Early Access stage, only Edwin the Wielder of the Flame, a melee character who can cleave enemies in his path and set his broadsword alight in flames, is available. Heroes play a fairly important role in this game, mainly because they are usually more powerful than the usual grunts and can last a lot longer against large numbers of enemies.
The gameplay in Age of Darkness is fairly similar to a typical real-time strategy game with base building, resource gathering, defense setup, and army recruitment. Like an RTS game, you’ll also be expected to venture out of your base to explore the surrounding lands, which in this case, is just covered with the creatures known as Nightmares.
The time of day also plays an important role in this game as Nightmares get markedly stronger at night. Unfortunately, you may only encounter Elite Nightmares at night and you will want to go out of your way to slay them. This is because these Elites drop very valuable red crystals that you’ll need for unlocking advanced skills.
Like any good RTS, the game has a skill tree where you can unlock useful skills using the resources you’ve gathered from the world. You can choose to unlock only one out of three skills for each skill level. If you want to survive longer in the game, you’ll do well to make full use of these skills since they are passives and will provide a permanent boost to your army.
Exploring the world is not only rewarding because you’ll discover new resource deposits like iron, which you’ll need for building upgrades and such as you approach the end game; it’s also rewarding because you may encounter points of interests or POIs. These POIs is usually swarmed with slightly more Nightmares than usual but once you’ve cleared the surrounding area, as indicated by the circle around said POI, you’ll be rewarded with “loot”, either extra resources or free units.
As mentioned, Age of Darkness is similar to They are Billions in the sense that your base will get attacked – well, it’s more like “swarmed” – by hordes of Nightmares every so often. These events are called Death Night here, and before the creatures will bear down on your defenses, you’ll get around 4 minutes to prepare. Each Death Night also impose a penalty, so you might want to strategize your defenses with that in mind.
If you do manage to survive a Death Night, you’ll then be granted a permanent boost called a Blessing. Like your hero, you can choose only one out of three choices given. However, note that this game has a bit of that Minecraft monster-spawning mechanics where places that aren’t illuminated will be covered by a sickly-green fog which will, in turn, “spawn” enemies during Death Night. If you want to avoid having Nightmares behind your defenses, it’s best to either build buildings that come with torches or build a light tower.
So far, I’ve had great fun with the survival mode, but the current price tag might be a bit high for a game that only has part of its planned content. You’ll be essentially paying for the upcoming content in advance. It’s not exactly a downside for the game, but if you’re planning to buy it, it’s crucial for you to know what you’ll be getting before you check out your cart.
Community
Age of Darkess: Final Stand is a single player game, but since it’s currently in Early Access, you might have some suggestions or feedback to provide to the developers. Aside from reaching out to them via Discord, you can also hop over to the game’s Steam discussion page.
Graphics/ Sound
The graphics are very well done here. The dark-ish tones fit perfectly with the game’s dark fantasy theme. In terms of sound, the sound effects here have that “Frostpunk” and “Warcraft” feel - two of my favorite games, so I’m definitely a bit bias here.
Conclusion
If you’re a huge fan of They are Billions and are looking for other games like it, then you’re in luck! Age of Darkness: Final Stand may not be as difficult as the former or has the same steampunk theme, but it is very similar in terms of gameplay and design, and will still give you a good challenge even in Easy mode. This game is slightly more expensive than the hit indie game, though if you grab the game before October 15th, you can get the game at a nice 10% off.
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