I’ll be honest, no part of me ever thought I’d be writing a gaming-related article to do with the popular band Imagine Dragons. Sure, I love the Arcane opening as much as the next person, and you can bet I’ve heard Warriors play ad nauseam in the first season of Sweet Home. But, aside from that, my exposure to the band has been fairly minimal. Of course, I’m aware of their popularity within the League of Legends scene, but that’s where I assumed their connection to the world of video games would end. Well, color me surprised that their lead vocalist, Dan Reynolds, has not only established a game studio, but also released the Beta for its very first game.
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Yep, Dan Reynolds and his brother Mac Reynolds set up Night Street Games and are working on a fairly interesting title that I believe has the potential to not only be great, but quickly become a huge obsession of mine and many others. While there are certainly some kinks that need ironing out, and its chances of trouncing the well-established competition are low, I have a feeling that what Last Flag is achieving is legitimately special and worthy of further investigation.
Last Flag Looks Like A Very Interesting Hero Shooter
The world is probably sick of hero shooters, and, honestly, I get it. As saddened as I was by Highguard’s untimely demise, I can understand why so many in the genre are dying out. Even Overwatch, the former poster child of the hero shooter genre, is stumbling with the disastrous launch of its sequel and subsequent ineffective rebrand. However, while I sympathize with those who are sick of hero shooters flooding the market, I do feel like Night Street Games’ Last Flag has a real chance to make it.
Last Flag, as it sounds, is a hero shooter centred entirely around the popular mode Capture the Flag, or CTF for short. I was an enormous fan of Team Fortress 2’s twist on CTF and played it endlessly as a kid, and Last Flag very much appears to be apeing a lot of that game’s best elements. It’s funky, 70s character designs and general worldbuilding, coupled with the cartoonish visuals, over-the-top abilities, and sprawling maps, certainly give off a TF2-coded vibe, albeit one that still feels perfectly distinct.
Where Last Flag differs is in its dedication to CTF. This isn’t your average spin on a familiar concept. No, Last Flag is taking the premise to a whole other dimension, ostensibly making it a game of hide and seek. Rather than the flag being in a fixed point, both teams spend the first 60 seconds hiding theirs somewhere on the map, and then must battle for radio towers to help pinpoint the location of their opponent’s flag. It’s like Battleships meets Fortnite meets TF2 in a completely wild and unpredictable format that is honestly endlessly engaging. This culminates in a finale that sees whoever found the flag first desperately attempting to defend it back at their base.
Unlike Highguard, Last Flag started with a public Beta during Steam Next Fest to gauge interest and collect player feedback. It is a smart move, but one that exposes the biggest flaw with the game. There’s not really much interest. According to Steam Charts, which in this instance actually paint the full picture, Last Flag’s playtest peaked at just 334 concurrent players. That’s startlingly low, even for a game that’s aiming for a smaller player base than something as monolithic as Overwatch. This is tough to stomach, largely because Last Flag has the potential to be one of the best hero shooters available.
We Need More Games Like Last Flag
Last Flag isn’t really repeating the mistakes of other hero shooters; it is offering something completely new and entirely focused. Whereas most new hero shooters try to ape what has succeeded in the past, Last Flag’s hyper fixation on the CTF mode and putting a novel spin on it offers something we’ve never really seen before. It also means that the game can grow from there by introducing new modes and new twists on its core formula, rather than playing its hand right out of the gate.
Of course, Highguard attempted something similar with its mash-up of raid-based shooters and the hero shooter genre, but it failed to test the waters before releasing into 1.0 and flopped as a result. Last Flag isn’t a Concord situation where it’s just another copycat aiming to compete with the best-in-class, nor is it at risk of following in Highguard’s footsteps, as it isn’t being developed in a vacuum. I’d suspect that Night Street Games doesn’t need to see huge levels of success in order to be profitable; however, I concede that it probably needs more than 300 people playing it in order to continue supporting it post-launch.
As it is a one-time purchase title, rather than a free-to-play experience, I sincerely hope Night Street Games considers some form of offline mode. There are bots present in the game that can fill out your squad, so I suspect it’s a distinct possibility. It just ensures that it remains a viable purchase post-launch if the servers ever go dead. Regardless, from what I’ve played during the playtest and from the dozens of extremely positive write-ups Last Flag is getting, it is clear there is something special on offer here. I genuinely did not expect this plucky hero shooter from the lead singer of Imagine Dragons to be as fantastic as it is, but it is exactly what the world needs right now.
Last Flag’s relative simplicity, its colorful vibes, and fair monetization model are refreshing, to say the least. It is extremely polished, complex enough to be plenty of fun with friends, and built upon a solid foundation that can easily be expanded upon with future updates, modes, and maps. There is so much potential here, and I sincerely hope that it gets the love it deserves, as Last Flag is a genuine joy to play. It isn’t often that multiplayer games inspire so much hope in me, and maybe it is the TF2-sized rose-tinted glasses adorning my face that makes me want this game to work so much, but Last Flag, amidst a slew of greedy, boring, uninspired, AAA multiplayer shooters, is a breath of fresh air and a phenomenal debut from a studio I hope gets to firmly plant its flag in this oversatured industry.
Will you be playing Last Flag when it launches in 2026? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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Sam and Dean Winchester in Supernatural looking out a window.
