Hardcore tactics RPG The Last Spell adds a dash of horde mode to the mix

An image from tactical RPG The Last Spell — (Image credit: CCCP)

If you're a fan of tactics games broadly, or tactics RPGs specifically, I'd encourage you to take the hour or so to check out the demo of The Last Spell, an upcoming tactics roguelike RPG from developers CCCP. In The Last Spell, you control a squad of powerful heroes in order to protect a ruined city from monstrous hordes while its mages cast a spell to rid the world of the horrible magic afflicting everyone.

Your heroes are ultra-powerful, able to cut down scores of foes, but there are always more monsters emerging from the mist that descends each night. To survive, you have to make it through each night so you can rebuild your city defenses during the day. It's a fun twist on the often sparse experience of a tactical RPG, forcing you to confront huge swarms of bad guys without getting worn down rather than putting you in tactical situations with equally dangerous foes.

That's not to say there aren't equally dangerous foes: There are. In the demo, I encountered vicious spellcasting ranged monsters, regenerating horrors that ate their allies to buff themselves, and explosive wall-wrecking boomers. I quite liked how I was forced to consistently keep heroes out of harm's reach at the end of turns because every hit point really mattered. The demo is promising, with a harsh metal soundtrack and pretty aggressive difficulty curve to smash through—though the final game intends to have both metaprogression and more difficulty settings to ease that.

CCCP is the developer of The Last Spell, and previously released Dead in Vinland. You can find The Last Spell on Steam.

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Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.