The Last Tempest

Sometimes, you become aware of a game's existence, and you know that within minutes, if not seconds, that game is going to take over your mind. Things will never be the same, because now you are obsessed. This happened before with Sekaikei Girl, and it happened again with Meta-Ph-List. I play a game that looks interesting. I play it again. Then I play it again. I explore as much as I can in-game. Additional information is hard to come by, thanks to multiple fruitless web searches, so now a game becomes something of a mystery.

The Last Tempest is, like Sekaikei Girl, a homebrew game for a Japan-only computer (in this case, the X68000). And like Meta-Ph-List, it is the one and only game from its developer, this one being Koucha Kikaku (Tea Planning, in English). From what I have been able to gather from the somewhat sparse Read Me file, and the even sparser information online, this looks to be a solo developer's work. As we will soon see, this is fucking wild.

But before I get into the game proper, let's take a look at that included Read Me:

Thank you for purchasing "THE LAST TEMPEST."

	This work is intended to be entertaining. However, it clearly blasphemes Christianity, and some people may be offended by it. As a creator, I take responsibility and intend to respond sincerely to any criticism of this work.

	I am not a Christian, but I find the life of Jesus of Nazareth interesting, and I also enjoy the lovely fantasies of the Virgin Mary and the Angels.
	On the other hand, I also feel outraged at the aspects of it that serve as a powerful trigger and excuse for the domination, exclusion, and massacres that continue in modern times.
	But this game doesn't make any special claims.
	I hope that you will enjoy this unique worldview for a moment, and that it will make you realize that there are people in the world who make games like this.

	By the way, part of this game uses "subliminal techniques."
	Each pattern of Christ's blood on the final level spells out the word "SEX."
	It will have no real "effect" whatsoever, and is instead expected to be spotted by the player.

You are a serpent of some sort. Maybe the biblical serpent that lured Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. I say maybe because there is no further explanation or plot for this game beyond that quote in the Read Me I just posted. But in any case, you are still a serpent. As this serpent, you are on a quest for murder, killing both angels and biblical figures alike. You do this by ramming into them repeatedly until they explode in a shower of blood. Also, you are invincible to all enemy attacks. Nothing can hurt you, except for gravity; falling off a ledge will cost you a life. Now, while enemies can't harm you, their attacks can push you back, sending you a long way down if you aren't careful. Mechanically, that's all there is to The Last Tempest. The verb is Kill. Kill every enemy to move on to the next stage. The game gets really hard at stage seven. I had to finally give up at stage ten.

But there is more to The Last Tempest than its pretty basic systems. As the author of the game said, this is a game about committing blasphemy in particularly violent ways. The violence you commit is set to some of the most beautiful sprite art I have ever seen. Torture and dismemberment are a common sight. There is a nightmarish surrealism that makes up this whole game. It plays like a platformer of its era, complete with a clearly defined goal, a high score, and a font that's been used in several Taito games. Yet, it feels wrong. There's something off, like this game isn't real, as if I had dreamed this game, and it manifested itself into the real world as some anomaly. While this game may be dreamlike, it is not random. Every single sprite was designed with purpose and meaning.

There is exquisite detail paid to the characters. The level environments give off a sense of desolation and desperation. Heavy, oppressive skies and barren plains. The gore. The otherwordly beings. It's like you are fighting in some cross section between Heaven and Hell, where both sides are crumbling around you. The Last Tempest is like a medieval painting with a leaderboard. Like one of the many paintings depicting the martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, or depicting the apocalypse. This point is pretty on the nose when there's a boss fight directly over Michaelangelo's "The Creation of Adam."

A particularly memorable moment in the game is coming across the mutilated, but still living, body of a good samaritan. A message immediately pops up on screen: KILL HIM!

Stage 4 is a battle against Moses and his brother Aaron. They will summon the Bronze Serpent to fight you, just like in the Bible, while Moses will part a lengthy platform like the Red Sea, dropping unsuspecting players to their doom. Another message will flash on screen when this happens:

BEHOLD HIS AWFUL POWER!

Every level has a time limit of 66.6 seconds, naturally. Once the timer starts getting low, you are warned that THE TIME COMES NEAR...

Once the timer hits zero, rather than the usual fail state that games have, you will get a new warning:

BEG HIM FOR YOUR LIFE.

"Him" in this case is Jesus Christ, crucified on a cross that looks like it was made by H.R Giger, flying on screen to try and push you to your doom. You can fight back for a while, but you will become overwhelmed. Jesus cannot be killed. You can kill his apostles, you can kill his father's angels, and you will kill his mother two different times, but Jesus Christ is the one entity that is truly almighty.

The Last Tempest is a tremendous work of art. It is an experience you don't get from most games. I knew after finishing the first level that this game was going to stick in my mind for a long, long time. This is probably because I'm a person who finds religious iconography as terrifying as I find it fascinating; the idea of humanity at the mercy of all-knowing, all-powerful, mystic beings beyond our comprehension that fluctuate between benevolence and malevolence at any given moment. Definitely a game for anyone who had some form of religious trauma as a kid.