At first, the mix of cute, unrealistic cartoon-style protagonists and co-op horror seems contradictory, but it does not take long to figure out its charm. Contrasts stand out, and Last Pirates: Die Together takes that lesson to heart.
The co-op multiplayer trend keeps going strong, and it is no surprise that this part of gaming keeps growing. Last Pirates: Die Together stands out in the genre by mixing phantasmophobia-style horror with comical arcade gameplay that recalls the co-op boom of the 80s and 90s. The result works surprisingly well.
It might seem like a weird choice to give the protagonists a defining bodily feature of a butt that would make the comedic villain Red Guy from Cow and Chicken jealous, yet, combined with aesthetics that bring to mind the clumsy charm of the Minions, it creates a very distinctive kind of protagonist.
A defining feature of harrowing horror is the feeling of powerlessness. This can be achieved by making the enemies extremely powerful, but it is rarer to go the other direction and make the player powerless. Last Pirates: Die Together manages to create a horror experience where seeing a rat is far more horrifying than hordes of zombies in many typical horror games, and that is not even mentioning the actual monsters. It is clean and purposeful because it makes that powerlessness the game’s core fear, even when the corpses are otherwise comedic butts with a bone sticking out.
The gameplay is also really clever. While normally the gimmick of odd physics in games is a tired trick, it works well in Last Pirates: Die Together. The core gameplay loop is to gather loot for the pirate captain, which means opening chests, drawers, and any closed object. The physics makes this a task that requires the player’s attention, and that focus makes the ghost sneaking up on them far more horrifying, since the jump scare truly comes out of nowhere. It is a wonderful loop for a horror game that truly exploits the psychological blind spots of human awareness.
There are a couple of slight drawbacks, though. The game plays so-so alone, and it might seem weak at the beginning. The first thirty to sixty minutes feel confusing from a gameplay perspective. Because the tutorial is unclear, it is easy to miss the objectives and what it asks the player to do.
It is great that Last Pirates: Die Together has a single-player mode for those who do not have friends online and really do not like to play with randomers. As anyone who played online in the 2010s can attest to, playing with strangers is not always an amazing experience. Even so, the single-player mode is heavily skewed against the player, because Last Pirates: Die Together is designed around teamwork. That design is rare even in the co-op genre, which explains why solo play feels weaker.
It is easy to think that co-op play will be all four players running around being loot goblins; however, the best way to go about it is to have someone on the lookout for monkeys or ghosts and warn the looting players of incoming threats. This further highlights the extreme focus on minor, invisible details of game design.
For a game that at first glance seems like a simple looting game, there is surprisingly much depth in how the horror and gameplay loop are executed. It is easy to see how Last Pirates: Die Together can become a mainstay for many during those late Discord gaming sessions. In other words, its core appeal is the way it turns simple co-op looting into steady horror tension.
