Is Last Stop worth it?

What is the story of the Last Stop?

The story of the Last Stop began with a young boy whose world was taken away from him by the Nazis in 1945.

The boy's father made one very important discovery in 1945 that would forever change the way humanity understands the workings of the universe. In time, this discovery would lead to our most remarkable scientific breakthrough: quantum theory, which allows us to truly understand reality, while at the same time revealing the incredible, hidden connections between everything in existence. This understanding, and the resulting technologies, have had many dramatic effects on our daily lives, from the birth of the internet to climate control, to self-healing materials and beyond. Many of those advances are now so far-reaching they are almost impossible to fully appreciate until you actually see them.

On the darkest day of history, the end of World War II brought about a new reality where technology could make the world a much more dangerous place than it has ever been before. As humanity entered into the new world we had no control over, we also faced a new enemy: one that is not confined to any known border or territory. We must now unite behind a common cause: the goal of protecting our future against the threat of this enemy. But this is not just a battle for survival, this is a race to the future, and one we cannot afford to lose.

Welcome to the Last Stop: a post-apocalyptic transit hub built underground. Inhabited for a century, the Last Stop once functioned as a thriving, interconnected network of underground city-states. Now it is run by the Council of One Hundred, a secret association of influential families who govern the Last Stop in their own interests, under the protection of an army of highly-intelligent Lasts.

How did things get so bad? What started out as a prosperous society where people lived by three simple rules of life - peace, safety and sustainability - changed after the Second World War. In this time, a powerful, secretive government-sponsored organization, called I-Corp, came into existence and decided that, after decades of trying to solve the problems associated with an evolving society, humanity should instead be brought down to its lowest possible standard so that they can begin again from scratch. It was during this time that the Great Wrecking, the first major war, occurred.

Is Last Stop worth it?

Last Stop was the project my dad and I had back in 2024.

We went at the beginning of 2024 because this game could have possibly been a big project for us. We wanted to do so since then, but the problem with it is we really did not feel it was finished enough for us to even continue with it.

It had been in my mind to get back to it again until the day I came across some new tools (the engine) that made it very possible to create the game with, but more importantly for me, how to make games in the best way possible. If you are interested in creating games, but find yourself facing limits, such as time, money or creativity, try to use this as a guideline.

Here are some thoughts on last stop: It's a good project that I enjoyed doing because I was inspired by games, but I didn't finish it for many reasons, the most important one being my poor motivation due to being tired, not interested in any particular theme or genre, or because I wanted to be lazy and stay at home all day long. This is a common reason I face in creating projects, something that I still haven't really figured out. I have to admit, these projects are mostly unfinished. When you are getting inspiration, I would advise you to think about how you will finish a project, and don't think about anything else (not your career, family, etc. These projects are almost done only when you are passionate about it (because you will never love them if you have no passion for them).

One of the biggest problems I faced in the project was to create everything using only the resources given, so I am going to give some examples to show you how I overcame that issue. First example is the car driving and path that it would take. I made it with an asset called tile image map. It was simply made by a picture that would act as its own sprite that would move around based on its position in the 2D grid. I could have done this by simply having an array of tiles but there was nothing else, it was just 2D images. So, we had to make the sprites individually and then we had to place them with a certain distance from each other. This might sound simple but believe me that this simple task took days to do.

Do choices matter in Last Stop?

Yes, they do.

The main character is faced with a choice to save a woman's life or stop an approaching train. The only way to survive this train is by leaping out the moving truck and hoping he manages to save the woman in time. The game ends when he reaches her, or if it ends before that, when he stops the train. Choices are limited, there are no savegames so the game over is inevitable, but what does it matter? Is this a good ending? Is this even possible to get on a TV-version of this game? We can't know yet if that is possible, but can we say that this ending is the best that a player can possibly get here?

Let's talk about the gameplay. The game is a third-person point-and-click adventure game with some puzzle-solving, some stealth, some exploration and much driving. Your journey takes place in a series of short chapters (6-12 minutes), with the final chapter taking 15 minutes or so to complete. You have two playable characters: a guy named Jaden and a girl named Nika. Both are voiced but Jaden has more content, mostly in the form of dialogues with the people in his life.

Jaden is on the run from a murderous mob as he looks for answers and a way to save his dying grandmother. When he meets the Nika, she offers help and companionship, saving him from the men after the mob discovers him. When he returns to the Nika, however, things get complicated, and not just for Jaden, as we'll see later on. The duo finds that together they aren't the problem they once thought they were.

Before I can go into detail about what choices are in this game, I'd like to provide some information on my own playthrough (I took about 35 hours). I played the Jaden storyline and did not end up in the Nika storyline until after completing Chapter 10. It was too early for me to have an opinion of Nika's story. As Jaden's story was being played, the Jaden and Nika dialogue changed depending on how far along I was. At times I heard only Jaden's story in the cutscenes and dialogue choices changed in the events. When I entered the Nika storyline, I could not skip that part of the storyline.

How long does it take to finish Last Stop?

Last Stop, the long-running web comic, is in its third year now.

To give us a sense of what it's like, I spoke to the artist, Peter Chung, about the process of drawing it, and asked him how he managed to fit so many things into the tiny strips.

Can you talk about the inspiration for Last Stop? It all started in January 2024 when I was working at the LA Weekly (the biggest alternative newsweekly in the country) and I wanted to make a web comic about what was happening in LA, and how the culture has changed since the mid-90s. So, I made these four comics, which I drew in my spare time, every day, every week, because I was working so much and it was just a good way to unwind, a little bit of therapy. Then I started to realize that people were starting to get into it, and I thought, this is better than therapy! I can actually be more productive, instead of using that energy just for myself, I can use it to entertain other people. So, I decided to stop making them, and let the webcomic take over.

So how did you come up with the name? I didn't have an idea for the title until a couple of months later. I was living in the Mission District in San Francisco, and it's not very clean, and there are a lot of homeless people there, and there are a lot of rats, so when I'm walking around in the Mission, I always see the Last Stop signs on the side of the road, and I thought that was so funny. So, I just decided to make a comic about it.

How do you manage to fit everything in the tiny strips? This kind of varies from one issue to another, but usually it's about three pages per week, so maybe twelve strips per issue, plus a few bonus comics. And it's a different challenge each time, because I really want to make sure that everything fits on the page, so I try not to think about where it's going to go.

What's the worst thing that's happened to you during the process?