Chris InglisThe Last Plague: Blight is a challenging survival game currently in development by Original Studios, launched on Steam Early Access on October 4, 2024. As an avid fan of isometric games, the visual presentation in the trailer immediately caught my attention, but it was the promise of realistic survival mechanics and cooperative gameplay that truly sealed the deal. After diving into the early access build, I’m happy to report that the game is shaping up to be quite promising in its niche.
The premise of The Last Plague: Blight is intriguingly dark. An obscure disease known as the Blight has descended upon the land, and you barely escape its devastating effects, finding yourself exhausted, starved, and alone in the wilderness. An enigmatic figure emerges from the dark, offering a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Players are thrust into a perilous open world that thrives on punishing realism, immersion, and depth. The isometric perspective provides a clear and strategic overview of the environment, allowing you to plan your movements and manage your resources effectively.
The survival mechanics are engaging and can be harsh at first until you become familiar with them. Hunger and thirst are significant factors; water needs to be boiled to ensure it’s safe to drink, and raw materials require proper treatment before cooking meat or crafting tools. Each ingredient shows its quality and blight percentages. While boiling water makes it drinkable, leaving raw meat too long could result in infection. Cooking reduces the blight percentage but never removes it completely.
The in-game journal prompts provide clear and concise instructions, allowing you to learn the game’s mechanics at your own pace. The tutorials cover everything from basic movement and combat to crafting and resource management. However, it doesn’t hold your hand too much, which means you often have to search for items within the crafting menu and break down other items into smaller ingredients. Creating stockpiles around your fire helps, allowing you to craft what you need from gathered resources.
Items stack in small piles of 5-10, taking up pack space quickly. Managing inventory can be a challenge, but maintaining stockpiles helps mitigate this issue. Sleeping at night requires you to have a fire that has enough fuel to last 8 hours, so you need to ensure you have enough materials stored within the fire inventory. There’s a lot to take in and consider. It doesn’t feel overwhelming solo but certainly having a mate to play co-op where you can team up to scavenge, build, and fight against the Blight, makes resource collection and progression much quicker and more enjoyable.
Combat can be tough, especially against fast-moving animals like stags and does. Creating an improvised spear helped, but it requires retrieval after throwing and takes damage each time, necessitating repairs. The realism in combat is appreciated but can be frustrating at times. Once you have progressed some of the journal quests and collected enough resources, you get to work on building a house and fences to protect you from the elements. This is where having a co-op mate to split the tasks in half becomes invaluable as playing solo really started to feel like a slow grind, particularly having to worry about thirst, hunger, stamina and rest too.
Despite the tough survival and resource management aspects, The Last Plague: Blight shows immense potential even in these early access stages. Visually it’s a treat with the isometric view but I know that it is not for everyone. The excellent tutorial prompts and atmospheric visuals enhance the game’s appeal. There are areas for improvement, such as streamlining some crafting systems and enhancing the AI of the Blight creatures, but these are minor issues that don’t detract from the overall enjoyment.
The Last Plague: Blight is a game I’ll be keeping a close eye on. Its blend of isometric strategy, survival mechanics, and co-op gameplay has me hooked. If you’re a fan of isometric games and enjoy the challenge of survival, this is definitely worth checking out. Original Studios has released a 2025 roadmap of quarterly content which looks exciting, and I’ll be jumping back in regularly.
This review utilised keys provided by ÜberStrategist PR and The Last Plague: Blight is available now on Steam early access.
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Johnny