Giant wooden walkers and ever-encroaching desert survival game Last Oasis has released a large new update, the Season 2 or "Commerce Update," revamping a lot of the game to address community concerns. The updates are intended to strengthen the experience of the game for smaller player groups and solo players, preventing some exploitative player behavior, and allowing players to move their more-permanent stone structures from place to place.
In Last Oasis players are survivors in a world where the sun burns so bright that those who stay in it will die. People thus move eternally through the oases of a vast desert to survive by riding huge wooden walkers, raiding each other and trading in equal measure. Season 2 focuses on trade and commerce, allowing players to move up the tech tree by trade as well as by harvesting resources.
A major change is the elimination of the "clown car" strategy whereby large player groups used the ability to spawn from any Clan walker to teleport from place to place as opportunities for piracy arose. Players now must bind their spawn to a single walker as its crew, so as the update says: "Travelling to another tile will now involve actually travelling with your Walkers instead of teleporting around."
You may remember Last Oasis from its promising but bug-troubled launch earlier this year, which saw developers Donkey Crew temporarily pull the game from sale and offer refunds. It was back, and stable, about a week later. (That's something we applauded at the time. Developers can and do sell broken games via Early Access, and often choose to deliberately, but Donkey Crew took the high road on this one.) Since then, Last Oasis has also gotten some intimidating and exciting volcanic regions to explore.
In their update for Season 2, Donkey Crew also did a miniature postmortem on what they felt was wrong with their launch game and how they addressed those problems, including the game's grind, the power of large groups, and the progression bottleneck for solo and small group players. You can read all about Last Oasis Season 2 and view the full changelog on its update post, or check out the game on its Steam page where it sells for $30.
