Update - 3/5/23: The campaign mode for Age of Darkness: Final Stand is now available. With 7 fully voiced chapters, and more to come, now's the time to delve into the terrible secrets humanity harbours in the Age of Darkness.

The Veil is closing in  

The nightmares are never-ending, flowing from beyond the Veil. You clutch your spear tight. The great sconce brazier burns to your left, holding back the dark with the dancing flames within. To your right stand your fellows. Together you are all humanity has to hold back the night, this is the last bastion, the last line of defence, and you are its wall. So, stand. 

That’s what Age of Darkness: Final Stand asks of its players. Bringing back classic old-school RTS elements with a survival-focused modern spin, this title from the Australian indie developer Playside Studios and publisher Team17 thrusts us back to the days of yore, puts a spear in our hand and tells us to stand one, more, night. 

Age of Darkness: Final Stand wears its inspirations on its sleeve, and I say that as a compliment. Carrying and reinvigorating the single-player RTS torch whose flame has been dwindling since its heyday in the early 2000s. The RTS genre, alongside fighting games, was one of the founding fathers of esports, but that sometimes left the single-player portion of them out to dry, the oft-forgotten second son of the industry greats. 

While the multiplayer side of these classic titles may be what many remember; for me, it was all about the single-player. Age of Darkness: Final Stand brings back peak nostalgia for me, sending me flying back to 2004, playing on my parents PC, desperately attempting the survival mission one more time. After all my brother had thrashed the campaign, so why couldn’t I? Few games had really captured that desperate single-player survival in an RTS since the heyday of the genre... 

Until Age of Darkness that is 

Age of Darkness: Final Stand focuses on a frantic day & night cycle of preparation and defence, exploration, and desperate retreat. The game’s unique ‘SwarmTech’ allows for up to 70,000 units rendered on screen at a time, truly capturing the feeling that you are up against overwhelming odds. For me, the game perfectly recaptures that nostalgic vibe of the classics with the classic RPG-lite elements of levelling up heroes like the veteran knight Erwin as well as building up the resources to upgrade your army. It does this while still innovating on the classics with modern gameplay features, fantastic visuals and streamlined base construction systems. 

The game is in Early Access, and offers a survival mode that sees you scouring the map for the sources of the nightmares before the dreaded Death Nights have them pouring through the Veil for your hapless town, as well as the recently added campaign, with more updates on the way. Regular updates are seen for Age of Darkness: Final Stand adding new features, heroes and units. Already they’ve added mutations to the survival mode, letting players add unique modifiers like removing heroes or limitless death fog. 

Since its release in October 2021, I’ve lost many an evening trying to hold back the dark. Pulling from the roguelike genre, every Death Night hits you with a different curse that can see the best-laid plans of defence crumbling before the oncoming hordes. Conversely, if you manage to survive the Death Night, three blessings will be yours to choose from, giving you a fleeting ray of hope to see your way through the next terrible onslaught. Suffice it to say, the game is not easy. 

The developers have been refreshingly player-driven in their approach to these updates, and it’s been great to see them taking the feedback of players to heart with these updates. Each content update has been vast and more than enough to drag me back to the game after a break. With so much going for it, it’s no wonder that the game is currently a finalist for 3 different categories in the Australian Game Developer Awards. 

I can’t wait to see where Age of Darkness: Final Stand is going next. When it leaves Early Access, it may well become one of the great pillars of the RTS genre, but even now it’s more than worth your time. If you want to take your Final Stand in the Age of Darkness, it’s available now on GeForce NOW Powered by Pentanet.  

This article was written by Pentanet team member "Motley" and does not represent the opinions of NVIDIA or Pentanet.