Video Game / The Last Spell

Most mages were hanged, or worse, in retribution.
Some of them, fearing for their lives, tried to find an answer.
They found a way... A spell.
The Last Spell.
They built a circle of power to channel their combined magic.
The goal was simple, yet nearly impossible: Channel enough energy to summon and break the Seals of Magic.
And banish all magic from this world, forever.

— Excerpt from the intro sequence

The Last Spell is an isometric Turn-Based Strategy game developed by Ishtar Games and published by The Arcade Crew that combines elements of RPG character leveling, settlement management, and Roguelite replayability. The game was released in March 2023, after an early access release in June 2021, and is available for Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.

The game is set in what was originally a Tolkien-esque High Fantasy world full of standard fantasy fare before a Well-Intentioned Extremist archmage discovered - and subsequently cast - a spell capable of devastation on an extreme scale, in the hopes of ending all war under threat of complete annihilation. What follows immediately after the initial test of the spell is nothing less than the near-total destruction of all life in the world, as various kingdoms use the discovery of such a powerful spell for their own ends.

The Last Spell begins once the dust has settled and almost everyone is dead, leaving the scattered survivors to pick up the pieces. However, as a result of the unceasing magical bombardment, a mysterious and deadly mist has begun to settle over the land, killing the living caught in it and reviving the dead. The player takes up the role of a Non-Entity General tasked with planning and executing the defense of various, scattered havens against countless hordes of undead during the night, while managing the havens' fortifications and economy during the day.

Gameplay in The Last Spell draws heavily from Roguelike games, with failure being expected more often than not, and every attempted run being unique to a rather large degree, even though the various haven maps (primarily terrain and initial obstacles) always start off exactly the same. Every day/night cycle follows a standard pattern as well, with daytime being a calm stretch where the player can build up haven fortifications, manage a haven's production buildings, purchase or sell equipment, and level up the heroes so they become stronger and more effective during the following night's onslaught.

---

The Last Spell provides examples of the following tropes:

• Action Bomb: The Boomer's whole purpose is to run in and blow up, dealing significant damage to heroes and fortifications alike.
• Action Girl: Any female hero that gets generated.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Helping the last remnants of the world survive against the undead and you really need that fancy, powerful weapon for the upcoming night? Better have money to pay for it, or else you're not getting it.
• After-Combat Recovery: Every morning, your remaining heroes recover some health (if they can) and mana.
• After the End: The game takes place in a fantasy setting where only ~5% of the world's total population survived a magical nuclear war.
• Airborne Mook: Winged undead fly everywhere, allowing them to bypass low obstacles and gaps in the terrain.
• Always Accurate Attack: A few abilities (typically for bows) completely negate the target's dodge chance, meaning the attack is guaranteed to hit.
• Amazon Brigade: A party of heroes comprised entirely of women will kick just as much ass as a party of men.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • There exists several options that the player can enable in the "Easy Mode" tab prior to starting a run that can take some pressure off of any attempt. Effects include an extra starting hero, extra materials/money, less enemies, etc. These also don't penalize the player's essence drops or achievement unlocks, so the player can take the crutches off once the Early Game Hell has been smoothed over a bit.
  • The Oraculum can be visited during a run, and any Macrogame unlocks purchased apply on the spot — heroes immediately benefit from passives, new items can show up in the shop as of the next restock, new buildings can be built as soon as you have the resources, ect. This help prevent the frustration of having to end a run to get important unlocks, especially early on when core mechanics are still hidden behind these systems.
• Anyone Can Die: None of your heroes are immune to being overrun by the hordes of undead. Carelessness can readily result in a unit getting swarmed and unceremoniously killed off permanently (at least for that run).
• Apocalypse How: Starts off at a Class 2 at the beginning of the game and can potentially upgrade to a Class 4 in failed runs.
• The Archmage: Heronymous Teller, the mage that started the entire thing by casting a spell he really shouldn't have.
• Armor Piercing: Daggers have an ability that can entirely bypass enemy armor, no matter how thick. Considering how squishy most heavily armored units are, this can potentially clear a number of enemies from the board very quickly.
• The Atoner: The Commander. He's Archmage Heronymous Teller, the guy who caused this whole mess. He's trying to make sure civilization survives his mistake, even if its survivors would kill him if they knew his identity. Even if he saves one world, he'll be whisked away to save another one for all of eternity.
• Auto-Save: Of the "Ironman" style, where the game will save after every action save for moving, which can be undone as many times as you want as long as you don't take any other actions.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Meteor Ring trinket grants whoever has it equipped access to the Meteor spell, which is a powerful ranged ability that hits a massive (relative to other weapon abilities) radius around the impact point. It also requires a whopping 3 Action Points and 10 Mana to cast once, which means whoever is casting it is likely not doing anything else for the rest of the turn and just burned through a sizable chunk of their mana reserves.
• Badass Cape: Some of the trinkets heroes can equip include some rather impressive-looking capes. It's just a shame they don't appear on the characters.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Some heroes use contagious poisons to cull the undead hordes. There's even an entire skill branch dedicated to Poison.
• Banishing Ritual: Conducted by the world's remaining mages in the various havens across several days straight. Upon completion, the magic seals are broken, and the world's magic can be wiped completely.
• Bilingual Bonus: The names of the two goddesses that provide the player with various boons to improve their chances of success in every future run are named Schaden and Freude. Schaden translates literally to "damage" or "harm", while Freude translates to "joy". Additionally, the concept of schadenfreude is finding amusement in another's misfortune.
• Bittersweet Ending: Victory in one haven is simply a single step in achieving the goal of wiping magic from the world for good. Every haven has to break their magic seal for it to work. On top of that, once all magic is banished from the world, the fact remains that the world is still almost entirely devoid of life. In addition, achieving total victory in one timeline means you will simply get pulled out and tossed into another to save that one as well, as part of your eternal penance for having caused the disaster to begin with.
• Black Comedy: Sometimes, the heroes will comment on their situation in rather grimly amusing ways.
• Body Horror: All of the undead are visibly mutated humanoids that look almost eldritch next to the living or typical undead in other settings.
• Bond One-Liner: For being the defenders of one of only a few remaining bastions of civilization, the heroes are surprisingly full of quips when killing any undead.
• Boring, but Practical: Most weapons' basic attacks have a trait that makes them indispensable in certain situations:
  • Hammers ignore Block value.
  • Daggers, magic orbs, and longbows do extra damage against isolated enemies.
  • Rifles and wands can't be Dodged.
  • Scepters and swords can do up to 400% damage depending how far the hero moved.
• Bottomless Magazines: Arrow and bolt management for shortbows, longbows and crossbows is non-existent.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: It's entirely possible to equip a hero with both a sword and a bow, and have them be effective at both.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The remaining mages, despite the majority of their peers having been hanged or executed in some other fashion, are absolutely essential to the plan of banishing all magic from the world. Their vitality to the plan, however, does not stop everyone else from making it clear what they think.
• Cast from Hit Points: Some heroes can acquire a perk that allows them to use MP-consuming abilities by instead sacrificing HP.
• Chain Lightning: A powerful ability available with tomes and the occasional (consumable) scroll. Hits hard, and can chain up to at least 8 additional targets.
• Character Customization: The player can edit almost everything about a hero's appearance, and can even save them for use in future runs (though only cosmetics, not abilities/perks/traits).
• Crapsack World: A High Fantasy setting full of war that was eventually destroyed by magical nukes, whose remaining sapient beings have to deal with nightly undead sieges. The Last Spell's world is not a wonderful place to live in, even before the game starts.
• Critical Existence Failure: Played with.
  • Heroes can continue to fight even if they have only a single point of health remaining. Once they lose that point, however, they immediately drop dead.
  • That said, taking health damage and falling below certain thresholds will result in the "Wounded", followed by the "Badly Wounded" status effects, which apply debuffs to the wounded hero(es) until they heal enough HP to go back above those thresholds.
  • Wounded and Badly Wounded status effects also apply debuffs to your enemies. It's quite easy to cripple zombies simply by damaging them enough.
• Critical Hit: A percentage chance on any attack to deal extra damage, which can be further modified by increasing a hero's critical hit damage percentage.
• Damage Discrimination: Averted, if you aren't careful with those powerful area of effect attacks, you can accidentally kill your own heroes - or destroy your fortifications - with friendly fire.
• Darkness Equals Death: All of the game's combat takes place in the dead of night, with the undead rising from the mist to siege settlements from sunset to sunrise.
• Death World: Anywhere the mist has covered, effectively. The mist will kill anything living that walks into it, and the world map shows the landmass almost entirely covered by said mist.
• Decapitated Army: On the final night, you win once you defeat the Boss, even if the town is swarming with Crawlers.
• Despair Event Horizon: The king whose family was killed in the initial testing of the Fantastic Nuke goes over the edge and orders his own mages to learn the spell so he can use it on other kingdoms in retribution.
• Does Not Like Magic: Mages sit at the bottom of the totem pole after the destruction wrought by Heronymous Teller discovering that one spell.
• Early Game Hell: Until you start unlocking upgrades for your heroes between runs, expect to lose far, far more often than you win.
• The End of the World as We Know It: The obvious result of numerous kingdoms slinging magical nukes everywhere.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Swampfurt, the tutorial haven, is doomed to be overrun no matter what. The lone mage trying to break the seal there can't channel the magical energy it requires, causing the magic circle to get destroyed no matter how well your heroes perform before that point.
• Fantastic Nuke: A forbidden spell discovered just before the game starts turns out to be exceptionally powerful and destructive.
• Featureless Protagonist: The player character is simply known as The Commander, with nothing else revealed about his background or personality. Until Schaden reveals you're Archmage Heronymous Teller incognito. Invoked because if he did reveal anything about himself, he'd be executed by the very people he's trying to help.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The three heroes you start with in every run will each be focused to one of the three archetypes.
• From Bad to Worse: A mage discovering how to cast a magical nuke was already bad enough, but the initial test of the spell accidentally killed a king's entire family. The king then had his mages learn the spell and use it against his enemies. Several steps down the line, the world is almost completely dead, and all that wild magic is now reviving the millions who died, forcing the survivors to fight every single night just to live one more day.
• Glass Cannon: You can build heroes to be like this, buffing attack power at the expense of letting their health pool stagnate. There is even a perk heroes can take that chops off a significant portion of their HP in exchange for a big boost to critical hit chance.
• Gone Horribly Right: Heronymous Teller wanted to stop all wars for good with his research. He certainly got that wish in the worst way possible.
• Great Offscreen War: We never see the total annihilation war happen outside of the intro's snippets, nor the wars before that war, but it's thanks to all of those that the game's story is happening in the first place.
• Hammerspace: Averted. The heroes can only carry what they wear, two sets of weapons, and a set of potions/consumables. Depending on traits, some heroes can't even equip all of that!
• Heal Thyself: Heroes carrying a health potion can chug it to instantly restore a portion of their lost health.
• Hold the Line: Your only objective in any given run is to defend the magic circle at the center of every haven from undead attacks at all costs. Nothing else matters, even if the entire haven is otherwise destroyed.
• Hot-Blooded: Numerous lines said by the heroes during battle are very bombastic.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Anyone wielding a wand or rifle will get a basic attack that never misses. It may not hit all too hard, but it's one of the only attacks that entirely negates an enemy's dodge chance.
• Jack of All Trades: Some heroes can generate with traits that grant them a small boost to all damage types.
• Large Ham: The heroes are often quite fond of shouting at the top of their lungs, both in triumph and sheer horror.
• The Last Title: The game is titled The Last Spell.
• Luck-Based Mission: Ultimately, success or failure of a given run comes down to if your heroes can acquire equipment and skills that synergize well. Metagame progress can skew the odds in the player's favor.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: There are shields that the player can acquire and equip to heroes, if they've got a free hand to do so. Shields grant a couple of abilities, as well as buffs, and can help make a hero more durable.
• Macrogame: Between runs, players can purchase upgrades for all future runs either by spending Tainted Essences gained by killing the undead, or achieving certain milestones such as getting a hero to X level or moving X tiles and similar.
• The Magic Goes Away: The game's entire mission is to bring about the end of magic to your world using the titular "Last Spell".
• Meaningful Name: The Last Spell itself is a spell that will banish all magic from the world, permanently. The names of the two goddesses, Schaden and Freude, also count.
• Nice Day, Deadly Night: Daytime is when the heroes can rest, and the player can manage the haven's fortifications and various buildings. Once night falls, though...
• No-Harm Requirement: Some heroes can acquire a skill that grants them a buff as long as they haven't killed an enemy during that same turn.
• No Hero Discount: You'd think being the only line of defense between a haven and ravening hordes of undead would be a good reason to get free stuff, right? Nope.
• Non-Entity General: The player character is never seen aside from (potentially) in the intro sequence in one cinematic shot, and never more than a shadowed silhouette. He does get an explicit identity later, though.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: The undead are never called zombies. Instead, every single enemy unit type has a descriptive name, such as Clawer, Runner, Boomer, etc.
• One-Hit Kill: Possible for heroes to perform during earlier nights if they're geared and leveled well. Later on in a run, though, the player will have to coordinate attacks to maximize damage and kills.
• One-Hit Polykill: Powerful area of effect attacks against squishy undead? You bet multi-kills are the bread and butter of an effective defense.
• One Size Fits All: You can transfer armor seamlessly between any hero, no matter if they're tall, short, or even missing an entire arm.
• Permadeath: If a hero dies, they're gone for good that run.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: A number of weapons have abilities that increase enemy dodge chances, often as a trade-off for a stronger attack.
• Protection Mission: Your one goal is to ensure the magic circle in the center of the haven stays safe. Everything else can be reduced to rubble without issue, aside from making subsequent nights more difficult.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: A few lines stated by the heroes (and one line said by a mage) during various moments of the game are said like this.
  "I could do this ALL! NIGHT! LONG!"
  "An overwhelming surge of power is coming... Right... NOW!"
• Regenerating Shield, Static Health: To a degree. Armor regenerates at the start of every turn during the nights, but health can only be recovered during the day, or with potions during battle.
• Reviving Enemy: Averted, thankfully. All undead that are killed during a run stay down for good.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The player can opt to abandon a run early if they think the chances of success are too narrow to even bother, for any reason whatsoever.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The entire premise of the game is to undo the effects of an unimaginably destructive war caused by magic. It's personal for The Commander, aka Archmage Heronymous Teller, the person who started this whole mess in the first place.
• Skill Scores and Perks: How your heroes improve day by day, all to better fight off the undead by night.
• Squishy Wizard: Can be averted by the heroes, but the mages operating the magic circle in the havens have a flat 50 HP each and no armor to speak of.
• Status Effects: Poison, stun, weakened resistances, etc.
• Straight for the Commander: The best way to win the final night. The infinitely spawning zombie hordes will eventually overwhelm you unless you beeline through them straight to the boss.
• Take Your Time: Daytime will only progress when you're ready to do so, and night will only start when you confirm it.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Heroes will often comment on how horribly outnumbered they are at the start of an enemy turn, when the hordes pour out of the mist lining the map edge.
• Title Drop: Right in the intro sequence. The Last Spell gets its name from its purpose - if successful, it would wipe the world clean of magic.
• Too Awesome to Use: Applies in a way that flips the trope's normal dichotomy. Players are encouraged to use items as soon as they're useful, as equipment charges are replenished at the end of each night. On the other hand, skills that draw from a character's mana pool are much harder to justify, as without significant investment said resource regenerates at a daily trickle. Can eventually be averted through perks, equipment, and haven buildings giving much better mana regeneration, allowing skills to be thrown around more freely.
• Unwinnable by Design: Swampfurt, the tutorial map, will always fall during the second night, when the mage trying to break the seal gets overwhelmed by the power being channeled. The town is immediately drowned in deadly mist mid-cutscene, and the magic circle gets destroyed.
• Video Game Caring Potential: With the ability to customize heroes' appearances and names, it's a given that some players will grow attached to them as they progress in a given run, and will try their hardest to keep them from dying.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: The more pragmatic players will consider heroes to be entirely disposable if the best possible play requires someone having to tank way too many attacks rather than lose the magic circle. There's also nothing stopping players (aside from a warning) from positioning heroes inside the deadly mist during setup.
• War Is Hell: The entire game is set after numerous wars between all the races of the land. An archmage unleashed a spell capable of obliterating an entire city just to stop the wars... only to incite an entirely new kind of war that wiped out 95% of all life on the planet.
• The War Just Before: The final, cataclysmic war that saw approximately 95% of all life in the world wiped out, setting the stage for the game.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: The forbidden spell discovered by Heronymous Teller in the intro sequence turns out to be a Fantastic Nuke capable of leveling a city and killing hundreds of thousands in a single go. The world has been devastated by repeated uses of the spell by the start of the game.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Heronymous Teller wanted to end all wars. He tried to do so by casting a magical nuke.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The heroes will call out each other (and the player by proxy) if another hero accidentally damages them with an attack.
• Zerg Rush: The undead have an immense numbers advantage and are absolutely unafraid to use it against you, even if it means they have to run into a meatgrinder.

---