Last Oasis

Last Oasis is Donkey Zoo’s take on the survival MMO genre. Currently in Early Access, the game takes notes from titles that have become genre staples, such as Conan Exiles and ARK: Survival Evolved, but still manages to feel like a fresh, exciting option in an overcrowded genre.

What’s the deal?

The world is dying, resources are scarce. In Last Oasis, you won’t be crafting firearms and driving cars, instead you really need to rely on the world around you - but you can’t stay in one place for too long. Reminiscent of the movie Pitch Black, you need to outrun the sun. The sun burns everything in its path, and approaches from the west, you’ll need to focus on building and maintaining a method of transport to keep on the move, all whilst gathering enough of an arsenal to protect it from pirates.

Brutal Hack and Slash

One of the key draws to Last Oasis is the combat. Using the likes of Scimitars and various sharp and blunt objects, the violence is visceral. As you slash at your enemies, blood spurts from their newly-carved wounds. Watching as streams of blood adorn the sand beneath your feet just adds to the feel of the world around you.

Trouble in (I guess it’s not) Paradise

Now, all survival MMO’s have their issues, but it’s rarely down to a lack of environmental variation. Last Oasis’ main issue is just that. The world is a sandbox in more than one sense of the word. Sand to the left, sand to the right, and sand all around you. The only real variety is with the wooden structures littered around the landscape, but even those are encased in sand. MMO titles usually thrive on biomes, but the fact that the huge open-world in Last Oasis is all the same is a little bland and disappointing.

Pillage and Plunder

Unfortunately, it’s hard to get a start in Last Oasis now. Long-term players have formed high-level clans that raid and murder anyone they encounter. If you’ve chosen to go any route other than combat-ready, you’re going to get wiped out, and fast.

Pros

• World-building is interesting
• Violence is visceral and bloody
• Decent visuals

Cons

• Easy to lose a tonne of progress due to rife griefing
• Lack of environmental variation