Last One Standing

Local multiplayer is starting to become popular again, especially since more and more games are designed to support a variety of controllers. Hence, party games and splitscreen co-op games are making a comeback, albeit slowly. Not all of them are particularly complex, but then again, it only takes a simple concept to keep players engaged for hours on end.

Last One Standing is a jam game with a very simple idea at its core: be the last man standing. However, instead of furious dudes with automatic weapons, you control domino pieces that hop around the table leaving a trail of highly unstable clones of themselves. As unimpressive as that may sound, it’s actually a lot of fun to compete with your friends, especially since the gameplay is so refined.

There are no other objectives, no maps and no special abilities, which means that it’s all about patience, skill and good reflexes. It only takes a light touch to fall sometimes, while other times you can safely shuffle over other fallen pieces, somehow. Granted, there are still some bugs you have to watch out for, but it’s understandable when you consider the very short development time.

Since it wouldn’t be fun if you couldn’t anticipate how the pieces react to certain events, the physics engine tries to be as realistic as possible, and it’s actually quite convincing. On the other hand, there’s very little happening at any given time, so it’s not that difficult to simulate the action. More complex game modes are planned in the future, however, and they should be even more fun.

As for the graphics, there’s nothing to render but the table and the pieces themselves, but the textures and the materials are exquisite, and it actually looks very photorealistic. You don’t even need a good computer to run it, although those reflections might require a pretty new graphics card that supports a recent pixel shader version.

All things considered, Last One Standing is obviously not a revolutionary game, but it’s very fun and well optimized. It might get even better if more options and game modes are added in the future.