Last Pirates: Die Together – A Look At Nearly 10 Years’ Worth of Games Leading To Kraken Brilliance
There are a variety of co-op horror-style looting games, but Last Pirates: Die Together appears to be carving its own path inside this niche subgenre of horror, while keeping some familiar mechanics that drew in crowds. The game draws inspiration from various horror games and uses randomized auditory cues to create a constant sense of dread, even when no enemies are present. Players must collect the required amount of booty to advance to the next stage; otherwise, they fail and begin anew.
So what inspires a co-op horror looting game in the first place? Where did it all begin, and what are the Last Pirates: Die Together developers at RetroStyle Games doing differently? With the game going into Early Access on Steam on Aug. 18, 2026, it’s worth looking at what they did right and where they could focus their efforts for the final game.
Absolute Chaos: Co-op Horror Chaos
Quite possibly the great-grandfather of the Co-op Horror Chaos genre as a whole could be linked directly to SCP: Secret Laboratory, released in 2017. Unlike typical horror games, SCP: Secret Laboratory is based on the original Containment Breach, which originated with the SCP Foundation, which built the lore, monster roster, and worldbuilding. SCP: Secret Laboratory, like Last Pirates: Die Together, utilizes team dynamics to achieve goals and voice proximity to either fight or evade enemies that aren’t your typical zombies; to date, there doesn’t appear to be a predecessor that uses these mechanics collaboratively in a horror sandbox-style game.
What made SCP: Secret Laboratory stand out from fan-made builds in Garry’s Mod Breach was the class structure and massively multiplayer ability with up to 50 players on community servers. This would be the game that laid the foundation for randomized maps, unique monsters with distinct behaviors, alternating scenarios with round-based chaos, emergent cooperation, and extensive replayability. This is where the similarities to games like Last Pirates: Die Together end, as the SCP game had different classes, including researchers, Chaos Insurgency, MTF with Facility Guards assisting, and SCP monsters, all in separate teams but played by actual players in real time.
What really makes a great game is when players can work together, even if they are from opposing positions. Many times, Science class and Class-D Personnel players could be found working in teams with Facility Guards who unshackle the Class-D, or Science players teaming with the SCPs themselves to escape; this was player-based and not an intended game mechanic. Escaping as Class-D or Science leads to respawning as MTF or Chaos Insurgency. These two classes are in direct opposition to each other, as their goals are to exterminate one another and try not to die.
That isn’t to say that any of these aspects of gameplay didn’t exist before; there are plenty of skill-based or zombie-style horror games that had elements, only that they shifted the focus from cooperative horror combat into a new direction with a uniqueness not seen outside zombie horror games like Resident Evil or Left 4 Dead.
A New Genre: Born From Greatness
Games such as Deep Rock Galactic, which entered Early Access in 2018, and Lethal Company, released in Early Access in 2023, both built idealized smaller versions focused on direct cooperative economic loops. Deep Rock Galactic incorporated procedurally generated missions with the target of getting resources and managing when to pull back from the mission. Lethal Company focused on hitting monetary goals before the mission could be considered a success.
These two pitted up to 4 players against their desire to survive or their unwitting greed to make as much as humanly possible. They gave the players the option to choose when they leave and cash in their ill-gotten loot to upgrade, though upgrades in both games vary. Deep Rock Galactic offers weapons with upgrades and permanent investments such as grappling hooks, drills, and armor; Lethal Company offers utilities like flashlights, walkie-talkies, radar boosts, and a teleporter.
In Deep Rock Galactic, players pick explicit roles to play; in Lethal Company, everyone begins the same and gradually progresses into a sign-wielding defender, the loot operator, or the sacrificial lamb, since combat doesn’t really exist for Lethal Company, unlike Deep Rock Galactic. As dwarves become stronger, humans serving their faceless overlord boss remain fragile and must find ways to survive to see another day. Staying past nightfall nearly always results in death in Lethal Company, but everyone is replaceable here, and only knowledge truly leads to survival in the wild.
Last Pirates: Die Together feels inspired by the weapons’ abilities and Lethal Company’s distinct lack of direct class building, really pushing the idea of one more room or one more mine shaft to get to better upgrades and tools.
Front Runners: Creating New Complexities
Burgling Gnomes and R.E.P.O. were built around the success of Lethal Company and Deep Rock Galactic and decided to go in opposite directions. R.E.P.O. decided to go all in on physics and the challenge of big versus small items. Every scrap item matters, but also has its own heft that requires two or more people to carry it to extraction, slowing the team dynamics and possibly resulting in death.
Burgling Gnomes takes a whole new position and instead went directly into infiltration mechanics, demanding awareness over understanding unpredictable monsters. The routes and timing become key features of the gameplay loop more than reacting to encounters, easing out of horror and into the tension of completing the heist. They both incorporate a sense of physical manipulation with a touch of thieving logistics that require player coordination to reach goals.
Last Pirates: Die Together appears to utilize both of these inspired takes and incorporates them, with the same lingering thought of whether to take on the next room or the next level to obtain as much gain as possible before everyone crumbles and dies.
Last Pirates: Die Together – Making Its Own Place
What distinguishes Last Pirates: Die Together is that it gives the player a boss, or overlord, which happens to be a giant Kraken looming in the sea that monitors the pirates’ every move. Players can mistakenly go into the water and get thrown back on land, turn in loot at the boat near the Kraken, and watch it observe until the boat has enough to leave. Upon achieving this requirement, players can continue looting or finally ring the bell to let the Kraken know they are ready to head to the ship for upgrades.
While Last Pirates: Die Together takes the quota boss from previous games, along with round-based escalation and environmental hazards, the Kraken genuinely feels more ominous than the faceless master of the Lethal Company. This plays into the nautical themes, alongside the piracy of looting the captains’ treasure troves for goodies. The most amusing part has to be how players come back to life by throwing a new booty at a crewmate, granting them legs once more.
However, they also incorporate random sounds throughout gameplay for different reasons, and sometimes there will be nothing at all. It is a constant barrage of noises: fear generation even when nothing is around, progress indication, and whether the Kraken is pleased. Last Pirates: Die Together also has combat, with options from swords to guns and cannons, making it more present than Lethal Company but underpowered compared to Deep Rock Galactic.
Unlike any of these predecessors, though, when you run out of stamina, players don’t just slow down; they see red veins across the screen to signify the need to stop or potentially die of exhaustion.
Rough Waters: Bugs And Flaws
While RetroStyle Games is building its own corner in the niche genre of chaotic horror co-op looting friend-type games, there are still some things that seem bothersome and buggy. While slapping butts is all good and fun, trying to open a cupboard and not being able to see inside it can be frustrating. Finding loot to put into the cauldron or pot, or even the cart, then getting items into the boat can be frustrating.
Crashing into walls with items or the carriage for the items causes items to break and release coins; this leads to having to pick up some or a ton of coins, which are also difficult to grasp. The stretchy arms feel like they might be useful, but can only really be used while holding something, not to pick something up. After playing the game for a while, randomly getting locked in place or stuck in a wall or floor will inevitably lead to death, which the player cannot do anything about.
Weapons don’t really feel intuitive, with the sword or scabbard breaking after a few uses and no indication of its durability. We started with free spare revives in the early rounds, so it was unexpected that by round two of stage two, the only spare left was the one we had bought ourselves. The most frustrating part was not knowing the durability of items and being forced to choose between protection and looting to meet quota.
I personally believe there is a place for Last Pirates: Die Together, despite the problems, and it could very well become a raging success, leading to new developments in future games if they find a way to clean up bugs and polish the game just a little bit more.
