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 a dark fantasy world with the last vestiges of humanity fighting for survival, Age of Darkness: Final Stand features proprietary SwarmTech technology to render over 70,000 enemies – the Nightmares – that attack humanity’s last known stronghold.

Surrounded by The Veil, a deadly procedurally generated fog of war that conceals Nightmares and drains the very lifeforce from anyone brave enough to venture through it, the final enclaves of humanity must survive a series of five Death Nights, waves of attacks with an exponential number of Nightmares to overcome, so hope can endure.

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. Each Death Night brings with it ‘malices’, random gameplay modifiers such as reduced range of defence towers or even trained units leaving training halls as Nightmares, which test humanity’s strategies for survival. Meanwhile, mighty Heroes bring with them unique abilities that can help strongholds hold back the Nightmares during the night.

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.

Developer/publisher PlaySide quietly dropped a HUGE update to their community, while also revealing that multiplayer co-op is going to be coming alongside a host of content, coming up with a new launch roadmap planned for this winter.

Firstly, the team would like to extend a massive thank you to all of our players for your patience over the past few months. We’ve been hard at work on the development of Age of Darkness: Final Stand, including new single player content, and our long awaited Multiplayer update.

Today, we are excited to share the future Roadmap for Age of Darkness: Final Stand, and reveal the final stages of our journey through Early Access and our path to Multiplayer and our full 1.0 release.

Over the coming months, we will be releasing three new content updates, with a core focus on addressing known issues and bugs, and bringing new single player, Survival focussed content to the world of Erodar. These will include upcoming balance changes, introducing the Order Knight to Survival mode, and new Blessings, Hardships, and Malices.

Multiplayer

We have remained committed to delivering on our vision for Age of Darkness: Final Stand - a vision that has always included a co-op Survival mode. We’re pleased to say that development is progressing well - and while this has been a humbling and challenging experience along the way - we’re massively excited to share that Multiplayer is currently planned to launch, alongside our full 1.0 release, this coming Winter (or Summer, if you’re from the Southern Hemisphere like us).

We understand that you, our players, and our valued Age of Darkness: Final Stand community will be key to helping steer us through this process. With that in mind, our goal is to share the first Multiplayer Beta this Fall.

We’ll aim to share exact dates for both our Multiplayer Beta, and the end of Early Access as we get closer to both launches.

We are incredibly excited for the future of Age of Darkness: Final Stand, and looking forward to sharing more updates around our Multiplayer development, and road to 1.0 in the coming weeks and months. Importantly, we’re excited to continue on this new chapter of our development journey with you - our players.

Seeds of Darkness update

The announcement comes with the first in a series of content updates for the game, this one being the Seeds of Darkness update, bringing all new map seeds, achievements, and gameplay improvements. 

Seeds of Darkness is one of three Survival focussed content updates planned over the coming months, with future updates focusing on balance changes, introducing the Order Knight to Survival mode, and new Blessings, Hardships, and Malices. Please check out the key improvements and a list of full patch notes below.

Map Seeds

The introduction of Map Seeds allows players to generate and regenerate specific maps using unique identifiers. Players can generate their own custom game, and replay an identical map with a different faction or hero. The map seed code also allows players to share their unique code with friends, in order to play through an identical map and settings. (Important to note - the corrupted crystal location changes every run).

We will also introduce a weekly seed that everyone can play and compete against others in the community! If you like a challenge, we’ll be running competitions within Discord via a custom map seed, so keep your eyes peeled for the challenges as we have a stack of prizes to giveaway.

Achievements

Seeds of Darkness also bring Achievements to the world of Erodar for the first time. We've added a variety of challenges across different levels to test your skills and reward your accomplishments. A couple of our favourites include:

• Veil Champion I - Kill an Elite Nightmare in a game of Survival
• Here Comes the Money - Collect 4,500,000 Gold
• Nightmare King - Beat Survival on Nightmare difficulty
• Lash Out - Destroy all Dark Crystals early in a game of Survival

Accessibility

Age of Darkness: Final Stand now offers enhanced accessibility, with new features including colour blind modes, warnings for destructive actions, increased customisable to difficulty settings, options to disable camera shake, disable Survival camera hijacking, as well as the ability to choose text colours for subtitles and dialogue, catering to a wider range of players' needs and preferences.

These additions aim to make the Age of Darkness: Final Stand experience more inclusive, accommodating, and customisable for all of our players, including those with diverse abilities and preferences.

We are always looking for opportunities to help players dive deeper into the world of Erodar. Seeds of Darkness includes an update to the World Map, allowing players to uncover more about the lore and history of Erodar as they progress through each Mission location in our Campaign.

v0.12.0: Seeds of Darkness Update Release Notes:

Map Seeds

• Custom Map Seeds
• Weekly Map Seeds

Achievements

• 73 Achievements

World Map Locations

• 11 World Map Locations Lore

Animation Update

• Hector
• Archer

Accessibilities

• Colour Blind Modes
• Mass Building Sell Confirmation
• Split Custom Difficulties
• Disable Camera Shake
• Disable Camera Transitions in Survival (During Death Nights and Final Stand)
• Disable Edge Camera Panning
• Text Colour Choice for Subtitles and Dialogue

Update Weaken to be a percentage reduction instead of on/off - now 70%
Repair now replenishes Armour on Buildings

Crashes

• Fixed a low occurring crash when pressing the respawn Hero button.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when placing Light Towers to uncover the Veil during the Final Stand.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when using formation commends off the side of the map.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when closing or exiting the game.
• Fixed a few edge case issues that caused crashes when accessing out of bounds memory

Performance Improvements

• Improved the performance during Death Nights and Final Stand
• Improved performance while in the Build Planning mode
• Fixed an issue that caused performance issues when placing multiple buildings at once.

Fixes & Changes

• Fixed an issue where the Hero would be teleported through environmental terrain after being revived.
• Fixed an issue that caused the momentum and speed of units to be slower when giving move commands in quick succession.
• Fixed an issue where Edwins Flame Shield ability played the incorrect animation track when activating the ability.
• Fixed an issue where Edwins crackfire VFX could display on auto attacks or other ability casts.
• Fixed an issue where the default hotkey T now opens the Skill Tree instead of the Resource & Villagers panel.
• Fixed an issue where the Grand Bellow Tower triggered its attack on enemies outside of its attack range.
• Fixed an issue where Cyrus’ abilities did not have any range spell indicators.
• Fixed an issue where the Dark Crystals would not display their Health bar on mouseover.

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 2024.