You might think you’ve played all of theDragon Agegames, but have you really? On top ofthe four mainline entries, there are actually four lesser-known spin-offs, released as browser games, or in one instance, on mobile.
All of those games have been taken offline now, but there’s one that stands out from the crowd. Dragon Age: The Last Court was a text-based game centred around political intrigue, letting players experience a story with decision-makingand even romance. Sounds like a fairly easy game to keep available for fans to play, but it was binned in 2020, six years after launch, and it’s been unplayable since then.
Dragon Age: The Last Court launched right beforeDragon Age: Inquisition, and was accessible through the Dragon Age Keep - the same one fans areterrified will be taken offline soon.
However, a fan is working to change that. Before it was taken offline, players managed to make copies of all the text used in The Last Court, so they could piece it back together themselves. Now, their efforts have given us aplayable demo, which lets us choose our character, make some choices, and even keeps track of our stats and decisions.
This is all thanks to Reddit user Eglwyswrw, who shared the playable demo of The Last Court with the Dragon Age community.
“This is a gamebook adaptation of a 2014 browser-based game of the same name, which used the same core gameplay loop as the much more famous Fallen London,” says Eglwyswrw. “It took seven real-life days to complete, thanks to a time-based system that blocked faster action unless microtransactions were purchased. Otherwise, it was a pretty cool little RPG, with choices and consequences and stats and skill checks etc.”
Thankfully, there isn’t a microtransaction in sight here, just the writing from the 2014 release - admittedly with some alternations to make it work in its new form.
“Understanding that writing is a form of art and that the original iteration of The Last Court contained writing of the highest quality, often matching that of the games it was inspired by, I felt compelled to start this project as a volunteer to preserve a playable form of The Last Court that, in spite of being in a very different subgenre of interactive fiction, somewhat keeps a good chunk of the original’s spirit… or so I hope!” they continue. “While I am neither a writer nor a programmer, I did try my best to keep any changes in a form that respected the hauntingly beautiful prose of The Last Court.”
You can play the demo on Itch right now. Having messed around with it a bit myself, it’s very impressive for a solo effort - and I can see what they mean about the writing. Better yet, they’re doing this all for free, so it’s worth checking out and testing the demo as they plough ahead with the rest of the development.
