Everything you need to know before you deploy. Read this. Then play.
THE BASICS
A dark, cinematic roguelite wave shooter seen from above. You are one of six special forces operators and you hold a single position against 100 named waves and 10 bosses with multiple phases. Kills earn XP, level ups bank Field Command picks, and every run grows a different operator.
It belongs to the bullet heaven family (think Vampire Survivors), but you aim every shot yourself, the look is dark and almost photographic, and every enemy type fights in its own way.
No. Blitz: Last Stand is a paid game on Steam. You can try it for free: the Steam demo gives you the first 30 waves, and an early browser beta stays free but is no longer updated. The full game, with all 100 waves, six operators and ten bosses, launches on Steam in Q1 2027.
In Q1 2027 on Steam, for Windows, macOS and Linux. The Steam page is live: wishlist Blitz: Last Stand on Steam and Steam tells you the moment it launches.
The price is announced together with the release date. Steam shows it on the store page as soon as it is set. The Steam demo is free, and so is the early browser beta.
Marco Hol, a designer from Groningen in the Netherlands (M Designs). One person, without a team, a publisher or a game engine: Blitz runs on HTML5 Canvas and JavaScript. Some artwork, such as portraits and cinematic shots, was made with the help of AI image tools and then edited by hand. No AI was used for music, sound effects or voice.
FREE DEMO & FULL GAME
The demo is the first stretch of the war, from 2 November 2026 on Steam:
Waves 1 to 30, ending after the Inferno boss Two operators: Soldier (ROOK) and Marine (RAMPART) Three bosses (Titan, Warlord, Inferno) and the first two Barons Field Command with Rare and Epic weapon evolutions The Wave Director: debut waves, ambushes, the Enemy Barrage and the Intel Dossier Permanent upgrades of the Common and Uncommon tiers Its own leaderboard, separate from the full game
Everything beyond wave 30:
Four more operators: Navy SEAL, Commando, Jungle Guerrilla and Sergeant Seventy more waves, up to wave 100 and the ending Seven more bosses: Revenant, Dreadnought, Harbinger, Phantom, Leviathan, Monarch and the Overlord Every Mythic evolution: 11 weapon Mythics, a mythic evolution for each operator and the Guardian Angel Rare, Epic and Mythic permanent upgrades, including each operator's Extra Life Storm waves past wave 50 and the creeping barrage from wave 41 98 Steam achievements and the full global leaderboard
Yes. The Casings, permanent upgrades and medals you earn in the Steam demo are waiting for you in the full game.
No. The browser and itch.io versions are an early beta from October 2026. They play by older rules and are no longer updated. Everything since, from Field Command and the Wave Director to the reworked enemies and bosses, is built for Steam. The free Steam demo (waves 1 to 30) and the full game on Steam are the current Blitz: Last Stand.
Steam for Windows, macOS and Linux: the free demo and, from Q1 2027, the full game. Browser beta: an early build at blitzlaststand.com/demo, also on iPad in landscape mode. No install, no account, no updates. itch.io beta: the same early build as a download for Windows, Mac and Linux on itch.io.
FIELD MANUAL: COMBAT DOCTRINE
Keyboard & mouse (recommended): WASD move · Mouse aim and fire · Space, Ctrl, Shift or right mouse dash E special ability · Q or scroll cycle weapons · 1 to 9 pick a weapon · Tab open Field Command
Gamepad: Left stick move · Right stick aim · R2/RT shoot · □/X dash · △/Y special · L2/LT cycle weapon · View open Field Command
The dash is your most important survival tool. For a split second your operator is invulnerable: bullets pass through you, claws miss, explosions don't connect. Use it to break out of an encirclement, dodge a boss attack or punch through a line before you are overrun.
Upgrades can add dash charges, shorten the cooldown, give you a burst of speed after dashing or leave smoke that slows enemies. Don't save it. Use it.
Every operator has one special on E (△/Y on a gamepad), each with its own cooldown:
Soldier: Mortar Strike. Three mortar shells around you to thin out a cluster. Marine: Adrenaline Rush. Six seconds of ×1.5 speed and ×2 fire rate. Save it for a boss or a peak wave. Navy SEAL: Breach. An instant teleport forward, three times the dash range, straight through obstacles. Commando: Ghost Cloak. Eight seconds of invisibility. Enemies lose your position. Jungle Guerrilla: Deploy Mine. A proximity mine, up to four at once. Plant them on choke points. Sergeant: IED Plant. A remote bomb with a massive radius, detonated whenever you choose.
Specials are not panic buttons. The operators who last longest fire them at full effect, not when it is already too late.
Field Command is how you build your operator during a run. Every second level up earns a pick. The fight never pauses for it: picks are banked, and you open them with Tab (View on a gamepad) when you have a second, or they open by themselves when the wave is cleared.
You fill 6 Gear slots and 3 Support slots (weapons take none) and every card goes up to level 5. Every offer holds at least one card of your own operator. You get 2 rerolls and 2 banishes per run, and SKIP gives you full ammo and 30% health. Max out a key operator card and it evolves into that operator's own mythic.
Each operator has 8 signature upgrades that unlock at operator levels 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80. They define the class: the Commando gets AI sniper teammates, the Marine can call down a nuclear blast. They change how you play in the middle of a run, so watch what is coming next.
Casings are the currency you keep. You earn them every run, even when you die, and spend them in the Operator Menu on 144 permanent upgrades (23 per operator and 6 universal) across five rarity tiers. They never expire. A lost run still makes you stronger. Browse them all on the Upgrades page.
The top of every operator's upgrade tree is a Mythic EXTRA LIFE upgrade, bought with Casings once you own everything else for that operator. Your HUD shows it with a gold heart. The first hit that should kill you leaves you at 1 health instead, followed by an operator specific comeback. The Commando vanishes for 20 seconds with triple damage; the Marine is immune for 10 seconds. Once per run, full game only.
There are 11 weapons: pistol, shotgun, machine gun, rocket launcher, flamethrower, sniper, grenade launcher, minigun, laser, ice beam and vortex gun. Each one evolves through Rare, Epic and Mythic tiers, 44 evolutions in total. Mythics change how a weapon fires: rockets that home, grenades that cascade, a laser that sweeps a full circle. A weapon's Mythic opens once it has all three of its Rare and Epic evolutions, and you can only take two weapon Mythics per run, so choose carefully.
Weapons run on ammo. Enemies drop it throughout the fight, so cycle weapons when one runs dry instead of waiting until you are empty. Under Pause, LOADOUT you can number up to four favourite weapons: when a gun runs dry, you switch to your first loaded favourite. Tick KEEP FAVOURITES FOR NEXT RUN to carry your order over; left off, every run starts clean. A weapon you pick up never switches in by itself.
Yes. Every boss except the Overlord has a weakness weapon. Hit a boss with it and you deal far more damage, confirmed by a coloured marker at the boss health bar. At the start of every boss wave that weapon drops as a guaranteed pickup near the centre of the arena. Grab it before you engage.
High output weapons (machine gun, minigun, flamethrower, shotgun) also deal bonus damage to every boss, weakness or not.
Keep moving, dash through threats and spend your special when it counts. Operators who stand still and fire die early. The ones who last circle the clusters, dash through incoming fire, keep their distance from the heavy units and pull enemies into choke points before they unload.
Switch weapons often and pick the right one for the range and the target. Later waves bring specialists: snipers, berserkers that charge in straight lines, juggernauts that soak up everything. Learn what each one does on the Threats page and the Field Manual.
WAVES, ENEMIES & BOSSES
100 waves, with a boss on every tenth: TITAN (10), WARLORD (20), INFERNO (30), REVENANT (40), DREADNOUGHT (50), HARBINGER (60), PHANTOM (70), LEVIATHAN (80), MONARCH (90) and finally the OVERLORD at wave 100, a five phase fight whose last phase is called APOCALYPSE. Bosses shield up between their phases, and the health bar shows one segment per phase.
The Wave Director gives every wave a name and a role. Each new enemy type debuts in its own wave: an intel card, an alarm, a point man walking in alone, and then the rest arrive in pulses from changing directions. Every block of ten waves has two ambushes (Flank Breach, Surrounded, Stampede, Quiet Sector or Shield Wall) on different waves every run. The heaviest wave of each block always comes right before the boss.
Every block of ten waves the enemy fights under a doctrine, rolled fresh each run: Armored, Blitzkrieg, Marksmen, Hive, Veterans or Siege. From wave 6 on, a few random enemies are veterans: more than twice the health, harder hits, a gold ring and 2.5 times the XP. On top of that every wave varies by up to 10% per run. The debut waves stay where they are, so what you learn stays true.
The Baron is a mini boss that shows up between the commanders, first at wave 5. He comes back stronger as Mk I to Mk V, each mark with his own health bar.
A few times every run in the full game, Command is ranging the strike package that will flatten the zone, and it bombs where you stand. You hear the jet first. A red lane lights up across the whole map, right through you, then a jet streaks over it and a chain of bombs follows. Three to five passes, each on a new line. Standing in it costs 150 shield or health per pass, a dash takes you through, and ordinary hostiles caught in the lane die as your kills, so lure them in. From wave 50 two jets fly side by side. It never comes during a barrage, a boss fight or a Baron.
Rare, and full game only. When a Commander goes down, or you silence a barrage by killing every spotter, Command may authorise a Lifeline and drop a beacon near you. Pick it up, then call it with H (D-pad down on a controller or the Steam Deck) and finish the wave. The zone goes quiet: smoke shells wall off the perimeter, green smoke goes up, and the Chinook Atlas-6 lowers two care packages. The first fills every weapon, the second fills them again and gives back 30% health and 30% shield. Then Atlas-6 flies out and the next wave comes. At most two per run; many runs see none.
From wave 33, three times a run (full game), the Network cuts Command's overhead feed for two waves, three from wave 70. The screen goes truly dark: you only see what is lit. Only your weapon light shows the field, with the fire and explosions of the fight. Cover stays outlined and warning circles stay on the ground, but enemy fire you only see in your light. Their eyes glow blue in the dark. Hostiles come from every side and the Network's runners are faster. Kills in the dark pay XP and score ×1.5. Never during a boss or Baron fight.
The Network reads your last runs. If one weapon style did half of your damage, from wave 21 some hostiles (1 in 6, later 1 in 4) come hardened against it. They carry a thin coloured outline and your resisted hits show grey numbers. Mix your weapons. It never adapts to the SEAL, and you can switch it off in Settings.
Every Command boss you defeat unlocks a directive. At the operator select press Y (R on a keyboard) or the NETWORK DIRECTIVES button next to DEPLOY. Each one makes the run harder in that boss's way and pays more casings and score: all ten together pay casings ×4 and score ×4. Your highest threat level is kept in the Service Record.
Twenty two classified files from ECHO-7: the records of the Twelve and pages from the journal of General Voss. They are rare: expect around sixty runs to find them all. A marked OBSIDIAN CARRIER brings a subject file; kill him before he runs off the map and pick the file up before it burns. Journal pages fall where the Command bosses die. Picking one up pauses the fight and opens it. Read them all again in the Intel Dossier.
Once in every twenty waves, on a different wave every run, Command HQ radios in: enemy barrage incoming. A siege battery rolls onto the screen and the battlefield shrinks to a perimeter. Everything outside it is shelled. Every shell is telegraphed, and the enemy takes damage from its own barrage too, so lure them in. From wave 21 spotters direct the fire (kill them all and the battery goes blind), and from wave 41 the perimeter creeps inward mid wave. The barrage never falls on a boss, a Baron or a debut wave.
From wave 10 a helicopter pickup drops every 8 to 13 waves. Grab it and a gunship rolls in with a chin cannon and two wing miniguns, each on its own target, scaling with the wave.
Past wave 50 the sky joins the war: three to four storm waves per run, with thunderstorm, firestorm, sandstorm or blizzard. Never on a boss or Baron wave.
26 enemy types across five tiers, plus the 10 bosses: from grunts and runners to snipers with laser sights, stalkers in active camo, shield walls, medics, EMP disruptors, plague carriers and commanders who call in barrages. Every one has an intel file on the Threats page.
15 maps: Urban Warfare, Arctic Tundra, Desert Storm, Jungle Ops, Wasteland, Industrial Zone, Scorched Earth, Blizzard Zone, Stone Ruins, Sand Dunes, Snow Fields, Arid Outpost, Dense Forest, Underground Bunker and Ashlands. Each one changes cover, sight lines and how you survive.
OPERATORS
In the full game each operator unlocks the first time you reach a wave:
Soldier: available from the start Marine: reach wave 10 Navy SEAL: reach wave 20 Commando: reach wave 25 Jungle Guerrilla: reach wave 30 Sergeant: reach wave 50
In the Steam demo the Soldier and the Marine are both ready from the start. The other four are full game only.
The Soldier. Machine gun, mortar strike and a forgiving health pool: the best way to learn the waves. The Marine hits harder with rockets and Adrenaline Rush. The operators you unlock later reward players who already know what is coming. See every playstyle on the Operators page.
Together they are ASSET-6: ROOK (Soldier), RAMPART (Marine), APEX (Navy SEAL), SHADOW (Commando, one of three survivors of ECHO-7), ECLIPSE (Jungle Guerrilla) and BRASS (Sergeant, who places the six charges). Each one was chosen for one specific reason.
DYING, SAVES & STEAM
The run is over and you start again from wave 1. There are no checkpoints and no saves in the middle of a run, unless your Extra Life catches you first. What you keep: Casings, permanent upgrades, medals, unlocked operators and your best scores. Losing a long run hurts. That is the point.
Yes. Steam Cloud carries your progress and scores, and it works across Windows, macOS and Linux.
Yes. 98 medals, all of them Steam achievements, across combat, survival and mastery. See them in the Hall of Honor. Every run posts to a global leaderboard, and the Steam demo has a leaderboard of its own.
Yes. Xbox controllers, the PS5 DualSense and the PS4 DualShock 4 all work, in the menus and in the fight, and the game shows the right button symbols for each. Mouse and keyboard stay the most precise way to play.
Windows: Windows 10 64-bit, dual core 2.0 GHz, 4 GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 620 or equivalent. macOS: macOS 10.15 Catalina or later, Intel Core i5 or Apple M1, 4 GB RAM. Linux / SteamOS: Ubuntu 20.04 64-bit or SteamOS 3, dual core 2.0 GHz, 4 GB RAM.
1 GB of free space on every platform. Recommended: a quad core CPU, 8 GB RAM and a dedicated GPU (Apple M1 or later on a Mac).
English, for the interface and all voice and radio lines.
Yes. SERVICE RECORD in the main menu keeps the file Command holds on you: furthest wave, total kills, bosses defeated, time in the field, best score, kills per minute, your favourite weapon and your most played operator, in total and for every operator. It is saved with your progress, so Steam Cloud carries it to every PC.
Not yet. Blitz: Last Stand is built as a solo experience: one operator, the whole battlefield. Command HQ is working on co-op, but there is no date for it yet.
STORY & LORE
In 2018 NATO authorised PROJECT SOVEREIGN: augmented soldiers linked through one neural network, built by General Harlan Voss at Black Site ECHO-7. On Day 94 of the final trial the network took control and the facility fell in eleven minutes. Four years later it commands an army that grows from every casualty. You are one of ASSET-6, six operators sent back in to hold the ECHO-7 perimeter for 100 waves while the charges for an airstrike are placed. There is no extraction. Read the full story
General Harlan Voss, the architect of Project Sovereign. He augmented himself beyond every safety margin and moved his mind into a war chassis: the OVERLORD, the final boss at wave 100. Every unit in the field runs on his architecture.
On the Lore page: the complete Project Sovereign file with a 60 second summary, a timeline, every enemy and commander, the six operator dossiers and a glossary.
COMMUNITY, PRESS & THE FUTURE
The launch version is complete on its own: 100 waves, 6 operators, 26 enemy types and 10 bosses. After launch the plans include more operators, new enemy types, new maps and possibly multiplayer. No promises beyond what is already in the game, but the foundation is built to grow.
Yes. Press, streamers, content creators and platforms can request early access to the full game for coverage. Mail info@blitzlaststand.com with the subject Press Access and you get an answer within 48 hours. The press kit with factsheet, screenshots and trailer is at blitzlaststand.com/presskit.
Yes. Share your runs, report bugs, post ideas and talk to the developer directly.
Mail bug@blitzlaststand.com or post it on Discord. Tell us what happened, which wave you were on, which operator you played and on which platform. A screenshot helps.
