I find The Last Stand: Aftermath endearing. I played a lot of its Flash antecedents back in the day, and revisiting them in 2024, they’re still perfectly cromulent, if a bit basic (shock horror, a Flash game without depth). There remains traces of the series’ core here, with an emphasis on finding supplies, and using said supplies to hope to other locations. It’s also heartening to see a developer transition out of that scene into the much more daunting world of 3D graphics, advanced gameplay mechanics, and longevity.

And at first, the rogue-lite structure – along with some very minor story rationals – lends itself perfectly to what The Last Stand is all about: never remaining in one spot, always on the move, always needing to find salvation. Only, there is no salvation. I mean, maybe on a story level there is, but a few lengthy runs at the game, I’ve simply depleted all my motivation reserves to keep playing.

That’s mostly because as a rogue-lite, it kinda sucks. Ideally, you start off as a gimped husk – a Samus Aran at the start of every Metroid game – only to over time (and many, many deaths) become stronger. Its the gradual power gain, and often how we the player are afforded choice in how we build our character, which makes rogue-lites fun. In Aftermath, I think describing our player character as “gimped” would be being too kind. Many unnecessary systems are at play to making us feel so worthless: passive infection growth, constant stamina loss, low maximum stamina, weak weapon durability, low weapon discoverability. The list goes on, and much of how we become stronger in this game is just by counteracting those negative traits. Over 10 hours in, with many of my stats maxed out, I don’t feel like an apocalyptic warrior god, I feel like a dude feebly waggling a plank of wood around. Even with maximum melee damage, maximum weapon durability, the biggest backpack, the highest stamina, I still run into arsenal shortages and seeming fits of asthma.

It would be somewhat inaccurate to say infection is a worry however, as it actually serves as a constant – though in my opinion unsatisfying – source of power. Explained in the narrative that unless we constantly medicate ourselves with scarce antivirals, we become more infected, taking traits of the undead until we finally succumb to the virus. Only, as I allude to, I don’t find any of the “mutations” on offer that rewarding, and therefore I’m loath to engage with the mechanic at all. Most of them are flat buffs, like the aforementioned overarching, persistent upgrade system, only these are on a per run basis, such as more melee damage, higher damage resistance etc. Thus I mostly treated my infection status as just another vital to keep in check, jabbing myself with the shot whenever I found one and ate dog food to keep my stamina bar full also.

A lot of these could be forgiven somewhat is Aftermath was structurally sound. Most combat will be close combat, and I found Aftermath towing the line between intentionally clumsy (a la Dying Light) and broken jank. Half the time I was hit by a zombie, it felt unwarranted, and it was often a result of the melee auto lock system targeting another enemy over the one I’m actually looking at. Long range encounters are similarly of two halves. On one, it’s a perfectly fine top down shooter, with each gun having its own kick and oomph. On another, the game doesn’t seem to understand terrain, despite there being plenty of hills, slopes, and steps to navigate, shooting either down or above towards zombies just sends your bullets straight ahead, making ranged combat more annoying than it should be.

I’m ultimately disappointed by Aftermath, though that in part is down to Con Artist Games trying to bite off more than they can chew. Rogue-lites are in abundance nowadays, and the zombie genre has been oversaturated for like 20 years at this point, so to release something so middle of the road doesn’t quite cut it.