Last Invader

A lot of the time, it’s the small games that seem to be the most fun. Take top-down shooters or shooters in general; they’re almost always challenging, tough to beat and very intense. And if you get one with nice graphics and solid gameplay, then it’s all worth it.

Such is the case with Last Invader, a tiny but big game created by Christian Nordgren. In it, you play as an invading robot who has the glorious task of wiping out Earth’s defenses before an invasion.

I can’t shake just how much that invader looks like an AT-ST walker from Star Wars, or maybe it is. To me, it was just that and at some point I was waiting for some R2D2-ish laser-axe swinging robots to come at me. Alas, that was not the case.

However, you do get an assortment of interesting and creative robot enemies to blast to smithereens. Last Invader is played like a twin-stick shooter with the classic wave after wave concept. The fun part is that each wave is different, and that steers you clear of the tediousness risk that games from this genre are subjected to.

Permadeath is real in Last Invader. It takes more than one hit to take you out but at times, it’s like the game makes a transition to a bullet-hell title. It’s good fun when you have to dodge tons of incoming enemy firepower while doing your best to hit anything besides rocks, fences, street lamps, and pipes.

The gameplay mechanics are solid, and you get a good range of weapons to pick up and upgrade. On the (kind of) bad side, there aren’t (yet) upgrades for your walker’s movement speed, or tech upgrades that allow even a very slow health regen. Nonetheless, it’s still a well-balanced game.

To wrap it up, Last Invader is a game you can have a good deal of fun with. It’s cute in design and all serious business when it comes to the blasting.