Devlog #1 — Someone has to keep the lights on

Hello, Keepers 👋

This is the first devlog. There will be more — roughly one whenever there is something honest to show, not one a week because a calendar says so.

If you are new here: Last Store on Earth is a first-person post-apocalyptic shop simulator. The world went dark, but someone has to keep the lights on. You find the last store standing, you restore it with your own hands, and then you open the door and run it.

The trailer is on YouTube and the Steam page is live. If you want the short version of this post: wishlist it, the demo is close.

A game in two halves

The first half is restoration. The store has been shut for years: rubble on the floor, boarded windows, dead wiring, graffiti on the walls, furniture that is past saving. You haul out the trash, mop the puddles, clean the glass, fix the ceiling and the pipes, repaint the walls, get the electrical system back and feed the generator until, at some point, you flip the switch and the lights come on. That moment is the reason the game exists.

The second half is management. A working store needs stock, so you order it over the radio, unbox the crates, fill the shelves, set your prices and deal with whoever walks in. The two halves are not separate modes — the game moves from one into the other and back.

What already works

The full loop, end to end. You can order supplies over the radio from Garcés — a supplier with his own opinions, whose catalogue opens up as he starts to trust you — wait for the delivery, break the seal on the crates, stock the shelves, put a price on the row and open the door.

Customers come in, look for what they want, complain when your prices are out of line, queue up and pay at the counter. Charging them is not a menu: you count out the stamps by hand, and if you hand back too much change, nobody is going to tell you.

Around that loop there is a store’s worth of small systems: furniture you can cut apart with an angle grinder instead of dragging it out whole, graffiti you sand off the walls, a build mode to place the furniture you buy, weather that gets in through the broken glass until you fix it.

Who you will meet

Two regulars are already in: Isaac and Vera. They come back, they remember, and they have their own reasons to be there. Garcés you will only ever hear through the radio — which says enough about him.

What is next

A free demo on Steam, late August / early September. Three missions — two main, one side — with the complete cycle: restoration and management, roughly one to three hours depending on how much you like mopping. It is the actual start of the game, not a sliced-up vertical.

After the demo comes Early Access. No date to announce yet — when there is one, you will read it here first.

If you want to help right now, two things move the needle more than anything else:

• Wishlist Last Store on Earth on Steam
• Join the Discord — demo feedback will live there

Thanks for reading. Time to get back to the store: the demo will not finish itself.

— Valentin, King Island Studio