Originally announced way back at E3 2017, The Last Night, a 2.5D cyberpunk action-adventure narrative game developed by Odd Tales and published by Raw Fury, has been in some stage of development since 2014. Aside from an IGN First video from October of 2017, there hasn’t been any major updates in the interim (both trailers are posted at the bottom of this article). With no real release date yet in sight, it is starting to feel like The Last Night might never see the light of day.
A small post on the Odd Tales website offers the only real update, though it’s lacking in details.
The Last Night is currently in production as of 2021.
we’re growing our studio, our team, and our skills to tackle this project.
The Last Night Discord doesn’t really offer much by way of updates either. The last post on the news channel from June of 2021 (the previous one being from January of 2021 warning about a coordinated attack on indie developers), pretty much just thanks the 3,000 individuals that have joined their Discord. It also states, again, that Odd Tales is hard at work on The Last Night, and that development will take as long as needed to perfect the game.
Now don’t get me wrong, this is perfectly acceptable. Far too often we see games flood YouTube and Twitter and gaming sites with an avalanche of content and promises, only to never live up to the hype or expectations of the gaming community. I do not mind if a game goes dark during development in order to avoid these sort of pitfalls. Cyberpunk 2077 could’ve learned a lesson from this approach — although, in that case, locking themselves into the triple-A marketing machine pretty much precluded CD Projekt Red from treading lightly and not overpromising.
Even though most of what we’ve seen of The Last Night (which isn’t much) is now several years old, as long as Odd Tales can deliver a game on par with with the content they have shown us, The Last Night has the potential to be a truly special experience. I love the character animations and the overall sort of parallax feel the 2.5D style, as objects comingle in the foreground and background. It feels like a pop-up book come to life, and the blown-out, garish neon signs and backgrounds look incredible in this rain-soaked cyberpunk cityscape. And the soundtrack by Lorn — at least the track used in the trailer — is entrancing, to say the least.
The Last Night could shape up to be an credible chapter in the cyberpunk gaming pantheon, a niche sci-fi genre that’s very much in the gaming mainstream thanks to Cyberpunk 2077. It’s hard to say if the fallout from Cyberpunk 2077 has created a hunger for such content or if it’s tainted it, but with the recent onslaught of cyberpunk-themed games, I’m tempted to say the former.
I’ve already wishlisted The Last Night on Steam. As the wait for any additional info continues, I will simply count the days and try to keep my anticipation in check. Letting myself get too hyped would only make that wait seem longer.
You can check out the E3 2017 trailer below (though it is age-gated):
You can also watch 11-plus minutes of coverage in the IGN First video below:
