Last War
A zombie strategy game: the shooter from its ads first, then base and alliance war
First principle
It has always felt good to watch your side grow. Last War opens with the shooter from its ads, where math gates swell your squad, then turns it into a base and an alliance war.
The needs it meets
- ProgressCore
- Seeing yourself get better: a level cleared, a rank gained, a skill learnt.
- Staying in touch
- Keeping up with family, friends and colleagues; belonging to a circle.
Why it wins
- The ad is the opening: the gate shooter from its ads is the first thing new players play, so the first minutes keep the promise.
- The shooter levels thin out as the base, heroes and alliance arrive; by the time players see it is a 4X war game, they already have a squad they raised.
- Seasons keep adding new rules and resources, and the weekly Alliance Duel makes allies team up and compete at once, which adds pressure to spend.
- It even turned the fake ads joke into marketing, with actor Antony Starr in a campaign about developers making a real game out of the fake one in the ads.
What keeps it ahead
- Paid growth
- Heavy ad spending to buy users, paid back by those who pay.
- Playing together
- Alliances, teams and leaderboards: with or against others.
- Live operations
- Events, seasons and new levels without end.
How it makes money
In app purchases
Free to play; players buy time limited packs, speed ups and hero upgrades, and limited currencies, stores and big discounts push spending into key moments of each event.
What a small team can take from it
It closed the gap between ad and game from the game's side, by making the ad's minigame the real opening. A small team can copy that: put the simplest, most satisfying minute first and the depth later; the war economy and ad budget are out of reach.
This week
- World: top grossing games, number 10, in 10 of 10 countriesGermany App Store 10 · France App Store 10 · France Google Play 10 · US Google Play 11 · Japan Google Play 11 · US App Store 12
updated 29 October 2026
- Developer
- FUNFLY PTE. LTD.
- Category
- Game
- Stores
- App Store, Google Play
- First in a list
- 29 October 2026
Sources
This is our analysis and judgement, drafted by an AI agent from the store pages and public sources and read by a person before it went up. Every figure has a source; where there is none, we give no figure. Found a mistake? Write to [email protected].