In development · single player · PC

Last Disciple

A single-player god game set in a Roman world that already fell once. Build a settlement, direct its people and command armies. A creature living in the settlement learns from what you do.

Work from above with the Hand, or walk the settlement as the Disciple.

Join the Discord

A paved Roman street inside a walled settlement, with an arched gate at the end and shops along both sides — A paved street inside the town walls.

What Last Disciple is

Rome has fallen. A single ship escaped the burning city carrying the last Roman citizens, the Vestal flame and the Penates, the gods of the household. Wherever the flame is set down, that place is home. You are the god they still keep faith with, though none of them knows whether you are watching.

The game is played up close. You reach into the world with a hand rather than working through menus: you lift and carry, place buildings, cast miracles, and stroke or slap the creature. Villagers are individuals with names, needs, skills and memories, and they can react to what they see you do. The creature lives among them and learns what kind of god you are from your example.

Play runs in a loop. Watch the settlement, notice a need or a problem, step in or leave it alone, then live with what follows in the town's work, its people's mood, the land and the creature. The camp you land with grows into a Roman town with districts, walls and a Fanum at its centre. In a rival scenario another god builds his own town nearby, raids yours, and can lose his to your maniples.

In testing: ponds and fishing, berry forage and gatherers, fuller meadows, the rival's own market, impressiveness, hamlet growth and regard, aqueduct and cistern water, lifelong jobs, tree felling and building fire are in the build but have not had a full play session yet. The status page lists what is not built.

Player guide: 240 tips on how the game works

The Hand

Pick up villagers, logs, ore-bearing rocks and animals, and carry, drop or throw them. The Hand is also how the town gets built: place buildings, draw walls and towers, and lay roads and paved streets.

How the Hand works

Read the land from above

Zoom out far enough and the view climbs through cloud onto a parchment map, with region panels and overlays for woodland, water, steep ground, fertility, roads and territory. Tab opens data overlays on the ground. Beyond the playable edge, a backdrop forest keeps the horizon wooded.

Build your settlement

Choose where the town grows. Zone a district and your villagers build inside it when they have the materials. Roman buildings go up in stages, with foundations, walls, floors and roof, and scaffolding that comes down as the work nears completion.

Building a settlement

Your villagers

Villagers have names and can claim a home and take a trade. They cut timber, mine ore, farm, keep animals and carry goods to storage. They get hungry, tired and ill, and they want somewhere to sleep.

The villagers in detail

Raise your creature

A creature lives in your settlement and learns from what you do. Give it a role such as gatherer, builder, entertainer or soldier, and plant a flag to mark the ground it should work. It keeps its own temper, and a creature that neither trusts nor fears you can refuse to go where you send it.

The creature in detail

Command your army

Recruit a maniple at a Drill Yard. The game's word for a body of soldiers, a maniple is drafted from your own villagers. Plant its standard on the ground to march it there and hold, on an enemy to attack, or on your wall to garrison it. You choose the formation and the men hold it.

Recruiting soldiers takes villagers out of civilian work.

Face a rival god

In a rival scenario, another god builds a town of his own. His hostility grows with time and with hostile deeds in his land. When he has enough men and supplies, he warns you, then sends a levy to pull down your outbuildings.

Raise your own maniples to meet them. You can attack his buildings in return, and holding the centre of his town unopposed under a Capture order makes it yours.

Miracles and alignment

Miracles are carried as orbs and cast through the Hand. Water can douse fires and water fields, healing restores villagers' health, and fire can ignite trees and buildings. Deeds, prerequisites and petitions reveal miracles, which you bind with an offering at the Fanum. This seat of power starts as the Sacred Grove. As devotion grows, you can raise it to the Fanum and Great Fanum, opening stronger miracle tiers.

How you treat your people is tracked as alignment, and it shows on the land and on the panels you open. Cruelty chars the ground.