Last Flag — Imagine Dragons make a game

From music career to indie devs

“Imagine Dragons branches out into game dev”. You can cross that off your bingo list. Last night I attended a press event where Dan and Mac Reynolds (Imagine Dragons) and Matthew Berger (Game Director) revealed more info about their Capture The Flag game, Last Flag. And I’m here to give you all the juicy details from this exclusive event.

Hero shooter? Not reaaally…

Dan and Mac made it pretty obvious from the get-go that Last Flag wasn’t designed to be a hero shooter. Sure, you can slay a bunch of enemy players in 5v5 shooting madness. But that’s not what will win you the match. The game is heavily centered on the idea of taking Capture The Flag (CTF) to the next level. Their inspiration is rooted in their childhood, as they used to be scouts and play a bunch of CTF during camps. Now they get to add their own spin on it.

“But what’s more important than murdering the enemy team?” Capturing the flag, duuuh. It’s pretty much in the name of the game. The concept isn’t hard to digest. There’s a hiding phase where you place your team’s flag in a spot where it’s hard to find. Then you try to find your opponents’ flag. Take it back to your half of the field. Then protect it from being recaptured for 60 seconds to win.

What gimmicks make it interesting? There are lanes with a designated tower in the middle. Capturing one will heal your teammates and procedurally reveal tiles on the enemy map where the flag ISN’T. This makes Last Flag more of a battle for intel. And less of a game where you need to murder people left and right.

Small robots will spawn on the map every now and then. Killing them will reward you with cash to upgrade your character’s abilities. Because yes, while this isn’t a proper hero shooter, the characters use similar concepts. But as Mac said, “Our characters don’t fill in roles like tank, DPS, etc.”. Instead, you have to think about a team composition that makes sense for scouting, capturing, and defending the flag.

As a fun fact, the genre of the game was pretty disputed. Dan loves the top-down perspective of games like League of Legends, the idea of fog of war, and allowing the player to see as much as they can. But after some convincing, he agreed that a third-person perspective makes much more sense.

“Aren’t you afraid that you’re giving too much free stuff?”

Mac, Dan, and Matthew seem to have their heart in the right place and want to build a community rather than sucking people’s wallets dry. While there’s no established price for Last Flag just yet, their goal is to release the game for an affordable one-time purchase. And every other customization like skins, executions, etc. that will be released after to be free. While I applaud the true F2P initiative, I still asked the question from above. It’s not like people haven’t tried this approach before. But the lack of friction and monetary investment usually saw people leave such initiatives. I honestly hope they succeed.

They’re also planning to add more maps, more game modes, and create tailored experiences for events and holidays.

They’ve taken the music and visuals in the ’70s direction. It feels like you’re attending a groovy party where everyone has fun. When I asked Dan about this, he also mentioned that he “wanted the music to feel organic” and employ traditional instruments. His motivation is that many of the existing games have this digitized audio footprint. So he wanted to return to the roots and provide players with something that sounds more… organic. As one of their popular song says, “I’m going back to ma roots”.

This all sounds cool. But what are the threats?

My main concern is that there’s so much that you can do with the concept of Capture The Flag. I hope I can be proven wrong. But Last Flag felt to me like the game is packed with lots of fun in the first few hours when you discover it. But once you figure it out, it’s a bit hard not to see it as repetitive and simplistic.

A few other press colleagues voiced their concern that we’ve already seen many hero shooters kick the bucket before. So what will make Last Flag stand out and not be lumped in with the likes of Concord or Highguard? If you ask me, clear communication that this is not a hero shooter and rather a party game will play a huge role.

I have nothing against Concord or Highguard. If anything, I’m sad that fellow industry colleagues had to lose their jobs because of the games failing to meet their goals. And I hope that Last Flag doesn’t follow a similar path.

As I said, these folks seem to have their hearts and minds in the right place. As a Game Director, Matthew emphasized that his design philosophy caters to making it enjoyable and entertaining. He’s not a balance fanatic. And he’s not willing to optimize and balance things at the expense of players’ fun.

I’ve said it a couple of times, but I’m rooting for these folks. And I’ll keep an eye out for them and what will become of Last Flag. If you wanna give it a go yourself, there’s a free demo on **Steam and [Epic](https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/last-flag-demo-3f97d9)**. Go check it out and see if it speaks to you.

Thanks for reading. See you soon with another article 🙌

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