The Last Bastion is built for co-op: one player builds, the others fight as heroes. But we also want you to be able to sit down on your own, take one hero and one Builder, and play through a story from start to finish. That is what the campaign is for.
This week the first act came together: Act I — The Gathering Storm. Twelve missions in four chapters, each with its own map, its own kind of pressure and its own reason to fight.
Smoke over the eastern ridge
Smoke rises over the eastern ridge: the Iron Horde has crossed the border.
That is how the first briefing begins. What starts as rumours of raiding parties grows, mission by mission, into a war. Villages burn, bridges become killing grounds, a mountain pass leaves almost no room for towers, and in the end the Iron Horde's full host marches on the Bastion itself, led by the Orc Warlord.
The act is divided into four chapters, and each chapter has its own mood:
- Early chapter. Rumours become reality as the first waves of the Iron Horde cross the eastern lands. A quiet village, a river crossing, a broken road line and a race against time.
- Mid chapter. The Horde grows bolder. Villages burn and the enemy pushes deeper into our lands. An old stone bridge, a narrow mountain pass, a supply post to defend and a burnt grove where the Horde's elite wait.
- Late chapter. The land is scarred, but we stand. A last stand on the farmland, the gate of Greywatch and the Horde's forward camp.
- Finale. The enemy stands at our gates. This is more than a battle. The Bastion.
A campaign that opens like a book
We did not want a loose map with markers on it. The campaign opens as a book. The left page belongs to the chapter: its story, a painting and a motto, with weather drifting over the page (mist in the early chapter, embers in the middle, ash later on, fire in the finale). The right page lists the missions: an icon for the mission type, your stars, a small preview of the map, and a lock on everything you have not reached yet. Red tabs at the top let you flip between the four chapters, and the pages actually turn.
In-game capture: the campaign book in the late chapter, eight of twelve missions completed.
Choose a mission and the book opens on a briefing spread: the story and your objectives on one page, the map and the enemies you can expect on the other. Every campaign has its own save, with its own difficulty, so you can run several at once and pick up where you left off.
Twelve missions, six kinds of pressure
A tower defence campaign becomes repetitive quickly if every mission asks the same thing. So Act I mixes six mission types:
- Standard. Survive the waves and keep the castle standing. The baseline.
- Defense. Your wall matters. In Hold the Line and The Gate the mission is lost the moment the wall falls, and the Horde brings Breakers to make sure it does.
- Timed. In Race Against Time the villagers need ten minutes to escape through the woods, and the Horde attacks without pause. At marked quieter moments you can switch to the Builder to reinforce, then jump back into the fight.
- Elite. In Ashen Grove larger, tougher veterans lead every squad. Take them down before the warriors around them overrun you.
- Assault. Before the Storm sends three columns at once, each led by an elite vanguard.
- Boss. In The Bastion the Orc Warlord himself leads the final wave.
Along the way the Horde grows with you: Breakers appear in the third mission, war drums on the old bridge, Kobold Skyraiders that fly over the cliffs in the mountain pass, Saboteurs going for the supply post. By the late chapter every Iron Horde unit is on the field.
Squads instead of a trickle
One of the biggest changes this week is how waves arrive. Enemies used to walk in one by one, a slow trickle that was easy to handle. Now a wave arrives in squads: groups of four or five that gather in formation behind the entry point and set off together. Heavy units go in front, ranged and support units at the back. In one of our test missions, the first wave used to take about 75 seconds to spawn; now its eleven enemies are on the field within seven. It feels like an army attacking, not a queue.
Stars and rewards
Each mission awards up to three stars: one for winning, one for the optional objective (often no enemies escape), and one for finishing with your wall above half health. Your best result is kept, so it is always worth coming back to a mission. The first time you clear a mission you earn gold and experience for your hero, rising towards the finale.
Between the waves
Every mission follows the rhythm of the game itself. You start as the Builder, with an overview of the map and time to place towers and walls. When you start a wave, the camera flies down to your hero and you take the field yourself. When the wave is cleared, the camera rises again and you see what you earned and how your walls are holding before you build again.
What is next
Act I is a playable prototype. Wave sizes, stars and rewards are trial values that we are tuning with every playtest, and six of the twelve maps are still first blockouts that will get a hand-made finish. The mission briefings are currently in English only. And there are more acts to write: the Iron Horde is only the first enemy to reach the Bastion. You have already met the AshWing and the Gravebound in our faction posts.
Cover: illustrative concept art in the game's book format. The in-game capture shows the current build.