Last Oasis, the woodpunk survival sandbox that has been in early access for over four years now and appeared to be dismissed by developer Donkey Crew in favor of its second game Bellwright, has tried to push back rumors of its death by promising a Season 6 release a couple of times. The Season 6 drum is being banged by the studio once again, only this time it brings feature previews and closed testing plans.
Donkey Crew says that Season 6 has “adjusted nearly every part of the game in some way,” starting first with a return to a full PvP focus for the title and removal of all PvE elements. This also means that balancing passes have been made to things like weapon damage, wall and armor health, and ammunition types, all while the studio hopes to strike a balance between dynamic PvP and ensuring some moments of safety so the game “doesn’t feel like […] a full-time job.”
The game’s other primary hook, the walker, is also getting revamped: Structures on walkers can be freely placed anywhere, limited only by the amount and type; walker types now have crew limits in order to stop smaller walkers from housing a zerg of players; and clans have a total walker power that limits how many walkers can be on a zone at any given time, with walker types having different power values.
Other adjustments to Last Oasis include progression now being tied to character levels, the addition of more rare and required resources to zones in order to both encourage exploration and PvP fights, and updates to territory control mechanics that focus on a proxy walker being driven a certain distance in order to claim territory.
All of this requires testing at larger scales than the internal tests that Donkey Crew has been performing, so the studio is now starting closed tests; interested players simply have to fill out a form and wait to see if they’re tapped. How long this test will take isn’t specified, with the studio saying only that it will “move forward with a more solid S6 release when [it’s] confident players are having fun and the design is working as intended.”
