Last Oasis has some really good ideas and a unique setting. However, it has never managed to retain players in the long term. Now the creator speaks out and says: Even he is no longer having fun with it. And he wants to change that.
What kind of game is that? Last Oasis was released in April 2020 in Early Access on Steam with a unique approach. The Earth has stopped spinning and is relentlessly burned by the sun.
As survivors, you are constantly fleeing from the sun, fighting your way through the hot deserts and seeking shelter in oases. You build strange runners out of wood in a mix of Wild Wild West and Conan Exiles, where even entire cities fit.
However, as water is a scarce resource, everyone fights for the rare resource. Accordingly, Last Oasis launched with a strong focus on PvP. MeinMMO editor and survival expert Benedict Grothaus thought the PvP in Last Oasis was a bad idea back then. And he apparently was right.
In the embedded video, you can see the trailer for Season 4 of Last Oasis:
Why did it fail? The constant struggle for survival apparently did not appeal to many players. Last Oasis started with over 33,000 players on Steam (via steamcharts.com). Just a few weeks after release, it lost 99% of its players.
The biggest problem was nasty PvP players who repeatedly beat up newcomers. More experienced players and large clans have the advantage of experience on their side and those just starting out quickly become their victims.
In 2021, there should finally be a refocusing on PvE. However, this has not brought much yet. After a brief increase in player numbers, Last Oasis is currently hovering around 300 players on average.
“Last Oasis sucks”
This is what the creator says: In a new post on Steam, the creator of Last Oasis, the Austrian Florian “chadz” Hofreither, talks about the game. It says:
Last Oasis is totally bad. And I should know, I made it. And more than that, I played it – a lot.
When I say it’s bad, I mean that I don’t have very much fun playing it. Not as much as in other survival games that I like. And I’m not alone in this opinion.
Despite several attempts and seasons that have changed a lot, the fundamental problem has not been resolved, namely that he does not like the game. Already in 2020, Hofreither spoke with MeinMMO in an exclusive interview about the future of Last Oasis.
However, he did not yet know how to satisfy the players, especially since he himself did not know why he was not having fun. However, he now has a solution, as stated in the post.
PvP is not always bad. Rust frustrates even veterans, but is still one of the most successful survival games today:
What’s next? With Season 5, Last Oasis is set to receive another overhaul and focus fully on PvE. Where PvP was always part of the game before, it will only function with explicit permission, likely similar to Valheim.
Instead, the world should become more dangerous, the PvE “brutal.” Everything should try to kill you, and you should constantly have to fight to survive at all. The “hand-holding” should also disappear, making the entry apparently harder.
Since the focus on PvE, the reviews have markedly improved, and the game currently stands at 80% positive ratings lately (via Steam). While there are critics who miss PvP as a unique aspect of the game, the path seems to be the right one.
The beta of Season 5 is now playable, at least until July 7th. Apparently, Last Oasis has taken cues from competitors like Conan Exiles or Valheim. Probably a good decision, considering which games are generally successful on Steam:
