The Last Worker was provided by Wired Productions and Renaissance PR to review. Thank you!
The Last Worker is a first-person narrative adventure that will force you to choose between capitalism or activism. As Kurt, you are the last human worker at the world's largest retailer. After dedicating over 25 years to the company, you will be thrown into a scheme with the activist group S.P.E.A.R. to help dismantle the evil corporation. Hopefully, at the end of all of this, you can reunite with the family you never knew you had.
I went into The Last Worker not expecting a whole lot, but I fell in love with the story. I am a sucker for dystopian future settings and I was pulled in to Kurt's personal growth and journey to overcome the capitalistic hell he is in. The game is short, I was able to complete the story in a 4 hour sitting, but it was definitely a roller coaster that I couldn't help but see to the end. There are also 31 achievements for you to collect too which adds in some replayability for those who want to 100% the game, but otherwise, there isn't much replayability. And for the most part, the game runs quite well on the Steam Deck...most of the time.
The Last Worker performs a bit weirdly on the Steam Deck, but it is playable. It doesn't need any change in settings for 60 FPS, but the battery drain can vary wildly depending on the area. While most will hover the battery drain around 9W - 11W, some will shoot upwards to 15W.
The game does support 1280x800 resolution as well as full controller support and cloud saves. All of this is great, but there is one weird issue the game has that I couldn't fully deduce.
In The Last Worker, you will go between doing a normal shift of sorting packages to ship out and completing missions outside of that to further the story. While the levels outside of the normal shift area run perfectly fine, the main area where you sort packages tends to have some weird framerate drops. I investigated it a bit and noticed that framerate would drop no matter what TDP limit or framerate cap I set. On top of that, battery drain wouldn't go up, meaning the game didn't need more power to maintain the rate.
The only other time I have seen something similar happen is with the newer Atelier games before the GPU Fix was implemented. This leads me to believe there could be some miscommunication between the game and the APU, which makes it under-utilize at some points in the main map. Now, it doesn't impact the game and is still optimal at 60 FPS, but you might feel those slowdowns here and there when gathering packages.
The Last Worker is a bit on the short side, but I loved the world and the story it had told. I would have loved to see more of the rest of the world or see more what the activists were like, but for a smaller, contained story about the last human worker finding the family he didn't know he had, it is beautiful. It also runs well on the Steam Deck, for the most part, with only the main area getting those random drops. But if you play without an overlay on, it won't be much of an issue!
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back!
The Last Worker is a short, but enjoyable narrative-driven game about a worker trying to find his own path and break free from capitalism. And, for the most part, it plays very well on the Steam Deck!
