In thisAge of Darkness: Final Stand - An RTS Survival Hybridarticle, we’re going to discuss the gameplay mechanics, resource management system, and combat structure of the new Real-Time Strategy Survival game developed by PlaySide and published by Team17. Age of Darkness has been in Early Access via Steam since July 24, 2025, and will launch fully some time next year.
Age of Darkness: Final Stand - An RTS Survival Hybrid!
What is Age of Darkness: Final Stand Early Access?
Age of Darknessis a base-building, real-time strategy survival game that’s nostalgic of the post-apocalyptic steampunk RTS called They Are Billions, which was released in June 2019. Here, you’ll be managing resources, constructing buildings, and forming armies, while surviving hordes of monsters known as Nightmares.
When it comes to combat in Age of Darkness, chaos runs rampant whether you’re out hunting for more resources or you’re trying to fortify your base to survive the deadly ambushes at night. Different types of monsters from basic minions to Elite Nightmares will aggressively attack you to destroy your Keep. The Keep is the most important structure you’ll have to protect because if it falls, then the run is over.
In Early Access, only the Survival Mode of Age of Darkness is available to players, with Campaign and Multiplayer modes expected to be added in the future. The goal of Survival Mode is to remain alive for the longest time possible by defending your base. The game also features 2 Heroes, 3 difficulty modes, and combat that rewards the players’ sense of urgency above all else. Gone are the days where you could just sit around and calmly wait for your villagers to accumulate many resources in preparation for your next encounters.
Age of Darkness Overview and Setting
Age of Darkness is set in a nameless dark fantasy world. Not much is known regarding how the Nightmares came to be and what their motivations are for trying to destroy everything around them. We don’t know much about the two heroes either, namely Edwin Everard and Aelis Syren, besides what their specialties in combat are. Edwin is an excellent and resilient Melee Hero with the ability to deal massive AoE and Fire Damage thanks to his Greatsword.
Meanwhile, Aelis is adept when it comes to empowering her allies to move faster and to inflict greater damage. She’s also an adequate Melee Hero who wields a Shortspear but is not as powerful on her own as Edwin. Hopefully PlaySide will include more abilities to add depth to their respective playstyles because these are limited to 3 per Hero. Note that when these Heroes die, they lose experience points. As such, it will take longer to unlock all their skills, making them less effective in combat.
According to the developer’s roadmap, they’ll be releasing new ally types, more Nightmare classifications, Heroes, and buildings as development continues, with a new content update in January. We can also expect the Campaign and a Multiplayer Mode during Early Access at some point, so these are definitely something to look forward to!
Age of Darkness’s art style captures the essence of what it means to be devoured by vicious, unforgiving Nightmares. The game is visually gorgeous as a whole because all of its elements come together effectively. The atmosphere conveys tones of despair and hopelessness in every corner, largely due to its dark and vivid colors, which are especially prominent at night. What adds to this is the balanced approach to lighting and shadows. Meanwhile, the buildings and units themselves are also aesthetically appealing thanks to their exceptional details.
When it comes to the audio, Age of Darkness never disappoints. The music is enthralling, panic-inducing, and engaging at the same time especially when the nighttime comes. There’s barely any moment of respite even during the day since you need to quickly gather resources while expanding your base and surviving the creatures you encounter. Everything feels chaotic and intense as it should be because of the loud beating drums and ominous soundtrack. Finally, the Heroes' chants are motivating enough to keep you going despite how problematic each situation may be.
Age of Darkness Gameplay Mechanics and Combat
Age of Darkness Survival Mode immediately assigns you at the center of a procedurally generated map, which means that every time you begin a run, the layout would be different. This encourages you to explore and reveal the map for locations of resources.
Resource Management
There are 5 resources to manage, particularly gold, wood, stone, iron, and dark essence. Additionally, you need to pay attention to the number of villagers since they’ll gather resources on your behalf, as well as the food rations for all of your units and structures. Note that unlike most RTS games, you don’t directly control your villagers, however, you can assign or un-assign them places to work.
First and foremost, you’ll want to increase your villagers and rations by building several Dwellings and Food Huts. This would then enable you to construct the Lumber Yard to gain wood and the Quarry to acquire stone and iron. Looking for the optimal place to build these structures is equally important. For instance, moving the Lumber Yard beside a thicket of trees will either provide you with a “Decent” or “Bountiful” amount of wood. The same is true for Quarries and Food Huts so be sure to test different grounds before putting them in their appropriate spots.
Among the resources we’ve talked about, dark essence is the toughest to collect because it requires you to slaughter Elite Champions or bosses who spawn from red crystals scattered throughout the map. They’re challenging to put down too since doing so requires massive firepower. Dark essence is useful to upgrade your melee, ranged, and siege units’ tier’s 3 and 4 skills. With this, you’re able to instantly revive your fallen Hero rather than waiting approximately 250 seconds for them to respawn. Again, time is vital in Age of Darkness so the faster you get your Hero back up and running, the better.
While you’re exploring this dark fantasy world, you’ll come across several Points of Interest. These are small areas containing caches of multiple resources up for grabs, as long as you defeat the large quantities of Nightmares roaming around them. Sometimes, there are stronger creatures such as the tall four-legged undead, which deals double the damage. So if you haven’t grown your troops to more than 5 units, you have to go back to the Point of Interest when you’re ready or be prepared to micromanage the army you currently have. The more ground you cover, the more resources you obtain in preparation for the arrival of the menacing creatures at night.
Base-Building System
Effectively managing resources will lead you to expand and reveal the map at a rapid rate to survive longer. Having adequate space and choosing the terrain to your advantage to place your structures in should be prioritized. For instance, you’ll want to put walls with gates as well as towers to house ranged units in choke points to defend against Nightmares. The map never changes once generated, meaning forests don’t disappear once logged, which makes this even more important.
Age of Darkness features a day and night cycle. During the day, you should diligently gather resources, construct buildings, fortify your base, and increase your army. During the night, you’re able to continue doing either of these things and acquire more materials in the process, but the creatures will become more powerful and challenging to attack.
When expanding, you want to make sure that your resources don’t stay maxed out for too long, otherwise, you waste the villagers’ efficiency because there’s initially no place to store these in. It’s very important to constantly pause in Age of Darkness by hitting the spacebar since this lets you plan your next steps while multitasking simultaneously. You won’t focus on a single task at hand like only seeking out resources or waiting for structures to materialize because of how time-sensitive the Survival Mode is designed to be.
Constantly upgrading your Keep by researching advanced technologies is the way to gain strength and confidence. By doing so, you’ll be able to raise structures such as the Storehouse to raise your resource’s max capacities and to improve the efficiency of workers. Ideally, these Storehouses are best placed beside resource-generating structures such as the Food Hut or Lumber Yard to further optimize your yield.
You also ought to set up a Refined Workshop as soon as you can to fine-tune your buildings, thereby granting added protection and maximum effectiveness. For instance, you’ll have the option to create resilient or Fortified Walls and Gates, making it harder for the enemies to penetrate your base.
When it comes to comrades, they have abilities you’ll invest points into, again, with the help of resources. For example, the Melee Skill Tree for Soldiers improves their attack speed and health whereas the Ranged Skill Tree for Archers enhances vision together with attack range.
Combat and Difficulty
In Age of Darkness, combat happens all around you, that is, when you’re out in the wilderness scavenging for additional resources or when vicious creatures are out to ambush you at night. There’s no safe place to put any of your buildings in since it can all be wiped away in a single instance. As long as you recruit numerous units and erect defenses, you’ll most likely survive when the Death Night comes along… hopefully.
This is the game’s most intense and climactic event, which happens every x number of days depending on the difficulty you’ve chosen beforehand. Random Malices like the Infected Water will make the entire encounter tougher to manage. In this scenario, some of your newly recruited soldiers will turn into the monsters you’re trying to defeat. Adjusting to whatever circumstance you have to contend with is key to protecting your troops and base.
Additionally, it’s absolutely crucial to withstand huge waves of Nightmares together with the deadly fog known as The Veil. This fog is out to harm and consume everything in the dark. To defend against it, you’ll need to place structures like Dwellings and light sources in shadowy sectors to expand your line of sight, which prevents cutting buildings off from the rest of your base.
If the fog of evil engulfs, you’ll receive the Horror status effect, weakening and slowing you down. To heal from this, affected units should head back to the Keep or rally at a light source. The Nightmare’s objective is to swarm your base with hundreds/thousands of monsters, to ultimately destroy the Keep, much like in They Are Billions. I can’t stress this enough but you need to pause the game often given how frantic the difficulty becomes.
However, when you survive the night to fight another day, it feels extremely good. The tension, buildup, and preparation are worth it because you’ll have another chance to improve your base to face the vile Nightmares once more. You’ll then choose from 3 random Blessings or rewards, which you can immediately apply. For example, you can hasten construction times with Motivated Laymen or raise the resources you obtain by slaying night creatures via Night Watch. The latter Blessing is beneficial if you continue to actively scout sections of the map during this time.
Age of Darkness has 3 difficulty modes, namely Easy, Normal, and Veteran. These differ from one another in terms of the number of saves you can make and how fast the Death Night comes for you, the volume of hordes, and the resources available in your run. Alternatively, you can also customize the difficulty settings by specifically tweaking any of these measures.
Age of Darkness Final Thoughts
Age of Darkness is compelling because it succeeds at bringing the complex and intriguing mechanics of RTS games into the survival space. Due to its demanding gameplay loop, you have to constantly think on your feet based on the map’s layout as well as the direction where the Death Night will be emerging from since both of these are randomly generated. However, there is currently not a ton of content in the early access version of the game with only the Survival Mode being available. Hopefully, this will change in January.
If you’ve been looking for an RTS that lets you play to your defensive nature, and features gorgeous visuals and audio, fast-paced combat, and a bit of a learning curve that incentivizes you to play even more, then you might want to try Age of Darkness: Final Stand for 21.99 USD on the Steam store. The game’s full release date is unknown as development may take longer than 1 year depending on player feedback.
What do you think of Age of Darkness so far? Are you already playing it? What features are you excited to see next? Let us know in the comments below! Catch more hands-on impressions in our latest previewsSands of Salzaar Gameplay Preview – Action Adventure Sandbox RPGandMortal Online 2 – A Hardcore Sandbox MMORPG (January 2022).
