“To survive or to turn into one of the walking dead, the choice is yours!”
Long Tech Network’s Last Shelter: Survival is an online strategy war game, and stands out due to its unique Zombie based gameplay. It has surpassed over 10 million downloads on the Google Play Store.
This is a base building game filled with almost everything that makes a base building game bad. There are time sinks, a lack of freedom for strategy, a narrow range of placement options, a requirement for repeated mechanical taps, and a progression that does not make logical sense. It is also time consuming, but requires you to repeatedly play for short bursts instead of sitting down with it for a while. In addition to the base building, it also features military management such as training troops, stationing heroes, increasing firepower and defensive capabilities etc. And lastly it has a war aspect, where players are allowed to fight each other. You can attack other players’ bases and loot them, and similarly other players are allowed to attack your base too.
On top of that there are pay to win microtransactions, over the top prices for consumables, and aggressive advertising for in game items. However, if you do not want this game to take over your life, do not play it, because it is just so darn addictive. The animations all look like someone went wild with the liquify tool from photoshop, but the underlying art elevates the game to something never before seen in such a title. Seriously, the character art is just freaking awesome. Now, the actual gameplay involves building different facilities, mining resources, and expanding your base all the while keeping zombies at bay. There are alliances of bases, and you can equip vans that go out and participate in combat, in some kind of futuristic dystopia where the zombie apocalypse is in progress. There is always something or the other to do, and although the animations of the great art are cheesy and campy, they have their own charm. It is a Russian game, where everything is over the top, the violence, the speed at which things are mined, the speed at which buildings get built.
Nothing about the game is normal, and every single aspect has some element of an ekstra. This seems like a templated, run of the mill job, but the title somehow manages to get the underlying gameplay just right, features next level artwork, and is just too addictive. However, the game could be annoying for free-to-play players if they aren’t investing some money into it.
Publisher: Long Tech Network
Developer: Long Tech Network
Platform: Android / iOS
Price: Free