The Last Stand: Aftermath

[i]The Last Stand: Aftermath[/i] is a zombie survival roguelike, a de facto successor to [i]TLS: Dead Zone[/i], and taking place 15 years after the events of its prequel, [i]Last Stand: Union City[/i]. You will be taking the role of an already-infected survivor, who is volunteering to go beyond his colony into the wasteland beyond. There is no escaping your fate, as you are already dead before you set foot outside the gates. However with every journey you attempt to gather resources for your home colony - as your current volunteer dies, you can choose the next hero to take his place and venture forth into a one-way trip. During every run, you are given a car, minimum equipment, and told to go out and locate as many supplies as you can. You can use the supplies you find during your path to improve your chances of survival, or leave them in marked caches for the next exile to find, before your deteriorating volunteer has either succumbed to the wilderness or been mauled by the undead. The world will contain items of Knowledge - forgotten artifacts which carry the ancient wisdom of the bygone human civilization. Collecting these mementos grants Knowledge points which are shared between survivors. Radios, found in the world, can be used to call-in your base in order to upgrade your character and every other consequent exiled volunteer with Knowledge. With every volunteer iteration, you have a limited amount of time as the infection gradually consumes segments of your health until you succumb to the virus. With every corrupted health segment you mutate, you can choose from 3 randomly selected perks which may offer a combination of boon and debuffs. These perks can range from a camouflaging smell that makes it harder for zombies to detect the player, to suddenly-musclebound arms that improve fist damage zombies while slowing overall movement speed. As you are exiled, you are given one antiviral - upon injection, it temporarily stalls the progression of your infection, buying you much needed time. [i]The Last Stand[/i] sustains an engaging roguelike formula, culminating in an adaptable survival gameplay. As you are faced with degrading melee weapons, limited ammo and progressively extreme environments, players would need to use every resource and trick to keep moving forward. You can throw items and create noise to distract the hordes, sneak around the environments to avoid confrontation, craft traps, create makeshift weapons, and manufacture various tools from scrap and resources you stumble across. The stealth option is available, but arriving at a heavy cost— every moment the player’s infection is spreading, and sneaking around takes away precious time. [i]Aftermath[/i] perfectly encapsulates the dreadful risk-vs-reward aspect that is deep-rooted in the franchise - your choices will strategically shape your run, whether it’s the locations you visit, which items you take with you, and whether you decide to hunt down dangerous zombie variants to craft extra doses of the antidote which keeps you going by just enough. Every world iteration in [i]Aftermath[/i] has an impressive amount of diversity. There are four distinct ‘biomes’, each with a half-dozen unique location types, and offering a variety of possible layouts. In between supply runs, you will encounter unique story missions which build upon the lore of the post-apocalyptic world, as well as provide clues which lead to the climax of the story. This creates a perception of your journey feeling epic in broader scope, as despite the disconsolate nature of your final days, you feel a sense of urgency and the desire to march forth to explore the world. The farther the player travels from home base, the stranger and more utterly wrecked the locations become. Every stop to scavenge the wasteland will show how utterly decayed the world has become, and it would be up to you to make one last stand beyond the wall to bring salvation to the remnants of humanity.