LAST YEAR: The Nightmare Review on Discord

     October 31st, 1996 at East Side High School is not your average Halloween. Five high school seniors face off against a blood-thirsty killer and must escape the campus before time runs out in Elastic Games’ Last Year: The Nightmare. Available on Discord for $29.99, Last Year is a 5v1 survival horror game that originally gained popularity on Kickstarter in the fall of 2016. For its unique premise and interesting storyline, it drew in donations from over 4,000 backers, and was received with excitement immediately after release. In the game, five players solve puzzles, evade traps, and craft equipment in order to escape the map, while the Killer attempts to distract them long enough for the clock to run out.

     My initial reaction was that the premise of a serial killer in a high school was potentially in poor taste given a lot of the recent tragedies across the country. Once in game, however, the theme is less on-the-nose than expected; the setting is less of an obvious high school and more of a vaguely school-shaped, dilapidated ruin, which makes it a bit more palatable. Initial discomfort aside, I went on to enjoy my experience with the game.

     I, personally, am not a huge multiplayer person, mainly because of my skepticism of internet strangers, but I got lucky with a good group of people off the bat whom I continued to play several rounds with. Cooperation is vital to this game, so I’m glad I liked my team! My first game, I got dropped into the tail end of a quick-play, which I didn’t expect. I assumed I would have to wait for a new game to start, so I was lost at the start, but it ended up working as a good learning experience for the subsequent rounds.

     You start the game by choosing your character–there are five high schoolers to choose from, each filling a different high school archetype. Chad is the jock, Amber is the popular mean girl, Nick is the nerd, Troy is the cool out-of-towner, and Sam is the geeky misfit girl. The game itself doesn’t really lead you to get attached to these characters, and though they will occasionally spout lines of dialogue, their actual identities don’t seem to matter much to play. Although Nick’s occasional trivia factoids were fun, I don’t think they necessarily added anything to my play experience.

     The Killer also gets the chance to their character, although this happens later in the game, and they can switch at any point they choose. According to the game’s website, the ability to switch between these characters comes from the fact that this “Nightmare” is a supernatural force, which was an interesting tidbit that I didn’t pick up from the game itself. There are three options for the Killer: Giant, Slasher, and Strangler, each with their own unique abilities. The Giant, for example, can burst through walls, while the Strangler can catch and choke the survivors. The different enemy types also have varying strengths and weaknesses within the three areas of ability–strength, speed, and stamina– making each one a unique play experience.

     After the players have chosen their characters at the start, they vote on which map to play in. The options are Library, Gym, and Bell Tower, each one presenting a different challenge in order to escape. While the objective technically differs for each map, they all seem to include finding objects which must be brought to a final goal, leading to the escape.

     In terms of actual gameplay, the controls (besides your basic WASD movement) weren’t immediately obvious to me, but they weren’t too tough to figure out. Last Year falls in line with most online multiplayer games in that, when you die, you do respawn, although you appear trapped in a closet in a random location on the map and can only resume play if a teammate lets you out of said closet. Each time you respawn, your character remains the same, but you do have the option of changing your class, of which there are four: Assault, Medic, Scout, and Technician. As a newb to the game, I stuck with Scout off the bat, because it seems to be the simplest. You are given a tracker which alerts you when the killer is near and can give off a flash of light to blind your enemy–especially useful when the Strangler has a fellow survivor in a chokehold. In any class, you collect scrap from around the map to upgrade your items and, in the case of the Technician, craft turrets, proximity mines, traps, or armor. On a similar note, the Killer can also place traps around the map, such as the infuriating bear trap, which leaves you immobile and at their mercy. The Killer can do this during “Predator Mode,” where they are completely invisible, although unable to attack. It certainly makes for some decent jump scares!

     Winning the game seems to kind of depend on your definition. Obviously, if no players escape, the Killer wins, but my group counted it as a victory if even one of our survivors managed to escape. All in all, though this game wouldn’t normally be my cup of tea, I surprisingly really enjoyed it, and would recommend it even to those people who don’t normally like horror or multiplayer games–it’s unique and it’s fun, and, in my opinion, definitely worth a play (or several)!

7.5/10

Check Out the Last Year: The Nightmare Launch Trailer:

For more information on Last Year: The Nightmare, visit lastyearthegame.com and join the official Discord server at discord.gg/lastyearofficial. You can also follow the social feeds on Twitter and Facebook.