The darkness is an entity of evil. Some say it is the manifestation of human fear and nightmares, others say it is a wandering mass of damned souls haunting us. The origin of the darkness itself is unknown, but one thing for certain is that we can keep it at bay through the power of light and fire.

Age Of Darkness: Final Stand is a dark fantasy survival RTS where you must illuminate, build and defend humanity’s last bastion against hordes of Nightmares.

Set in the remnants of a kingdom consumed by a deadly fog, you decide. Will you hide in the light? Or take back your world.

Strategic construction, careful resource management, and rapid recruitment are the keys to surviving unrelenting swarms of Nightmares. Robust defenses to build, battle worn heroes to enlist, and the tug of war between light and dark all complemented with an original soundtrack by Path of Exile composer Kamil Orman-Janowski.

Age Of Darkness: Final Stand is coming to Steam Early Access on September 15, 2021.

Age Of Darkness: Final Stand will enter early access with an intense survival game mode that tests your resolve. By day, construct buildings, gather resources and recruit an army led by unique Heroes. Scout into the deadly fog of war and take the fight to the horrors within. By night, survive swarms of enemies numbering in the thousands. Made to be highly replayable, your army will fall, your settlements will crumble, but you will learn. Rise from the ashes again and again to push back the darkness of ‘The Veil’ and keep the light alive.

Age Of Darkness: Final Stand’s Early Access releases with 5 Difficulties to choose from, each with their own game settings and specific number of save game slots. In addition, several Hardships may be imposed on your Survival Mode. These Hardships are modifications that twist the game rules in challenging and deceptive ways. Can you survive without a Hero? What if the Death Fog appeared every single night? However, with higher difficulties and more Hardships come the rewards. As if you can survive, your final score will be all the greater.

Early Access is only the beginning. PlaySide intends to support Age Of Darkness: Final Stand with frequent updates driven by a strong roadmap and an even stronger sense of community feedback. We keenly understand the importance of constantly injecting new life into a survival game and we have lots more in store. Including new units, buildings, game mechanics, gameplay depth, and whole new game modes.

“Age Of Darkness: Final Standheralds PlaySide’s expansion into the hardcore PC platform. As a studio created to develop AAA titles, the vision has always been to develop larger, more hardcore titles on PC and Console” said Gerry Sakkas, CEO, PlaySide Studios. “Age Of Darkness: Final Stand is a testament to the grit, adaptability and talent of our artists, engineers and game designers. We’re extremely excited and anxious to meet our first wave of players on Steam and to finish building Age Of Darkness: Final Stand together with the community!”

"The PC RTS genre is as wild and untamed as it is deep and complex. This is a space where anything goes and the player's expectations are limitless” said Sean Gabriel, Lead Designer on the title. “Rising to that challenge and bringing PlaySide's special blend of personality, experience, and talent to bear has been a herculean task of which we're exceptionally proud. With Age Of Darkness: Final Stand we've been able to combine our passion for Action RPGs, Roguelikes, and RTS games into something wholly our own - and we're only just getting started."

Key Features:

• Fog of War: Evolved: Light up a rich, complex, procedurally generated map to claim territory back from ‘The Veil’. A dynamic living death fog that conceals enemies, drains life from your troops, and hinders exploration efforts. Holding the line against this terror is not for the faint of heart. Any units unfortunate enough to be too close to ‘The Veil’ become ‘horrified’, sending them into fits of fear and lowering their fighting effectiveness. Only light cures the darkness, so fight in the light or pay the price.
• Death Nights: Brace yourself against huge tidal waves of Nightmares. Leveraging an internally developed technology called ‘SwarmTech’ Age of Darkness: Final Stand is able to  render over 70,000 enemy units on the screen at one time. These enemy legions claw their way up through seething fissures in the earth to reinforce ‘The Veil’. When the Death Night begins, you’ll be weakened by a Malice - a random affliction capable of undermining the best laid plans. If you are fortunate enough to survive until dawn you will be rewarded with a choice of Blessings. Live or die, Death Nights will test your strategic skills to breaking point.
• Heroes Vs Horrors: Lead the charge against the horrors of the night with powerful and unique Heroes. Using special abilities gained from levelling them up, these Heroes can be key to turning the tide of a desperate battle. But beware, the Nightmares have elite roaming champions of their own that drop precious resources when killed, posing an extreme and ever-present threat to your expansion. Are you the hunter, or the hunted?
• An Army Needs Training: Train and configure your army via a multi-faceted Army Skill Tree system where you decide upon multiple routes of progression for Melee, Ranged, and Siege units. Grant your Archers invisibility to scout hard-to-reach places. Imbue your Sentinels with rage so they may restore their health with each blow and install speed boosters on your Ballista’s to hurry them to new defensive locations. Each session, the choice becomes yours, though be warned, the most powerful abilities may cost more than just your gold.
• Day & Night transitions, expand by day, hunt by night
• Living Death Fog system that grows and recoils from the light
• Horror and Embolden based status effects which may curse or aid your troops
• Special Nightmare units, Spitters, Crushers, and Wraiths that test your combat skills

Age Of Darkness: Final Stand is coming to PC (Steam) in 2022.