I've got a terrible craving for an MMO at the moment, and Last Oasis continues to look like it will scratch that itch. Thankfully, after a delay, it's approaching its Early Access launch, due in the first part of 2020. In the meantime, a new trailer gives us a better idea of what we'll be getting up to when it appears. Give it a watch above. 

Though I confess I've grown very tired of crafty survival games, Last Oasis has already worn down my reticence thanks to its incredible walking landships. These ships are how survivors in the post-apocalypse get across the small stretch of land that's still habitable, and they range from wee walkers to massive leviathans with a crew. 

It's the big battles between armadas—which you can see near the end of the trailer—that I really want to get into, grappling onto enemy vessels while they splinter and explode. Looks like I'll probably need to make some post-apocalyptic pals first. 

The dynamic economy has also piqued my interest. You'll be able to become a full-time trader, and Donkey Crew has drawn inspiration from EVE Online for its trading system. You'll have to find oases with different resources, and traders will be able to create trading routes between them. Because the map's dynamic, the location of these resources will change, so people will need to work together to make the most of them before the land becomes scorched by the sun. Guilds will be able to control these areas, too, which nets the guild a bonus whenever anyone starts harvesting in their spot. 

Hopefully we'll get a specific release date soon.

Last Oasis, the nomadic survival MMO, sure promises a lot. A dynamic world, EVE-inspired trading, giant walking land-ships—it's an exciting prospect, but unfortunately one we'll have to wait a bit longer to experience for ourselves. 

Originally due to launch in Early Access this summer, it was first pushed back until October. Lamentably, that hasn't been enough, so Donkey Crew is postponing it again, this time for quite a bit longer. It's now expected to appear in early 2020. 

"After collecting lots of feedback from our beta testers, we came to the conclusion that Last Oasis has not yet reached the level of quality we want to offer to you," the update reads. "We thought that a month would have been sufficient to achieve a flawless Early Access survival experience. That is not the case, and releasing Last Oasis at its current status would just disappoint your expectations, and no one wants that."

Between now and launch, Donkey Crew aims to add more of everything to the MMO, from new mechanics to more end-game activities for both PvE and PvP players, along with improvements to the features that are already in place. In the meantime, you can watch a new trailer.

As exciting as smashing walking ships into each other sounds, I'm happy to wait for something a bit more fleshed out. It's not as if there's a dearth of games coming in October already. 

Donkey Crew will announce the release date with it's "200%" confident it can follow through. 

Last Oasis is a survival MMO in which players construct weird, walking land-yacht machines and use them to fight over the last hospitable chunk of land on Earth. The specifics are tricky—the Earth has stopped spinning and the Moon disappeared for some reason—but it looks very cool, and the promise of a dynamic map that's always in flux is intriguing, if maybe a little worryingly ambitious.

It was supposed to launch into Steam Early Access this summer, but with August dwindling away developer Donkey Crew has revised the plan by committing to a slightly delayed Early Access date of October 10. The studio said the extra time will enable it to continue working with closed beta players "to optimize and add further polish" to the game prior to opening the doors to everyone.

There's a ring of The Road Warrior in the announcement—"A day now lasts a year, and the only way to survive is to keep moving" is the sort of thing that really deserves to be read in a gravelly Australian accent—but the new trailer is all Dune, courtesy of the appearance of the Sandworm, which makes short work of the walker it catches. 

Luckily for those on board, the second walker sticks around to help out—Ha! Just kidding! He's hauling ass, and I would too. Sorry, bud.

With the Early Access launch pushed back, there may be still time to get into the closed beta: Donkey Crew didn't say whether new applicants are still being accepted but if you want to take a shot you can sign up here.

Last Oasis developer Donkey Crew hosted an AMA for its peculiar survival MMO this week, giving us a better idea of what life is like on a world where the scorching sun leaves only a small strip of it habitable. Hard, apparently. That habitable zone is constantly moving, you see, so players will have to stay mobile and work together to get resources from an area before it (and they) are burned to a crisp. 

"We wanted to go away from how other survival games handle respawning resources," said project lead Florian Hofreither. "Instead of respawning resources at the same spot, which encourages camping those spots, we bring up new maps constantly with fresh resources, and 'expedition' maps that are only accessible for a few hours before the sun scorches them. We really want to commit to the theme of travelling and exploring."

You'll still be able to claim and fight over territory, though, but eventually you'll need to pack up your base and move somewhere safer. When your clan is in control of an area, you get a bonus from anyone that ventures into it to harvest its resources, so it actually benefits clans to have visitors. Donkey Crew hopes the system will inspire big clans to look after little ones, letting them stay in their territory and protecting them from players who have taken up a life of piracy. 

With resources so fleeting, traders are probably going to find a lot of ways to get rich. It's a core mechanic and you'll be able to dedicate your life to trading, or join a trading guild and work with pals to make you all richer. 

"We're avid fans of EVE," said developer Pogosan, "and inspiration from our experience with their world and other games that heavily rely on trading." Because oases have different resources, traders will be able to create temporary trade routes between them, packing all the goods into their walker and ferrying them to an oases that's lacking a precious commodity. 

Walkers, Last Oasis's leggy landships, have to be constructed first, but while they are customisable, you won't be picking each part yourself. You'll choose a preset first, but you'll be able put your own stamp on it. Donkey Crew hasn't decided how many walkers there will be, but they'll specialise in combat, transport or exploration.

The largest walker of them all is the Flotilla, a mobile city and last bastion of humanity. It won't be in the game at Early Access launch, but Donkey Crew does plan to introduce it at some point. Like EVE, though, Last Oasis seems more concerned with letting players make their own bases and trade between each other, rather than having NPCs and NPC settlements.

Last Oasis is coming to Steam Early Access soon, Donkey Crew announced at the PC Gaming Show, but the question of Epic exclusivity still came up. It won't be an exclusive, Hofreither reiterated, and the studio is looking into launching on other stores, not just Steam—but only if everyone can play together.

"From a rational point of view, a multiplayer game like ours needs to have a large playerbase to reach its full potential," said Hofreither. "Artificially limiting our playerbase would not be good for us and would hurt the game quite a lot. We want to be as easily accessible as possible. Some people argue that Steam's cut is too large, but our goal is really to have as many players as possible, and the revenue per player is really not the most important number."

Give the AMA a read here.

Last Oasis is launching in Early Access on September 3.

Last Oasis is a survival MMO set long, long after an apocalypse where the last humans constantly have to outrun the scorching Sun. That's why everyone lives in strange nomadic machines, scurrying across the world on mechanical legs. The exclusive trailer shown off at the PC Gaming Show is wild. Admire the bizarre landships above. 

Developer Donkey Crew announced Last Oasis back in January, making quite the entrance with an incredibly impressive trailer full of massive, colliding behemoths. The new trailer has plenty more fights and crashes, as well as skirmishes between bands of players on the ground, but Last Oasis isn't all warfare. 

Players will need to team up to create these big machines—harvesting, crafting, building bases and then eventually crewing them. You can eschew war entirely and try to make it as a trader, using the player-run economy to make your fortune, or you can become a pirate and prey on other nomads. Like EVE Online, eventually you could be part of an alliance that controls a region and its resources, which you'll then need to protect from other clans. 

Last Oasis will be coming to Early Access on September 3.

Editor's note: This story previously stated full release was coming on September 3.

Last Oasis is an upcoming Early Access survival MMO where players will have to compete over fleeting resources in Earth’s last hospitable strip of land. And they'll do that by constructing Walkers, wooden landships propelled by sails and mechanical legs. Take a look at them in action above. They look incredible and I’ve never been so up for hours of chopping down trees and refining resources.

So! Why is everyone fighting with each other with weird wooden machines? It turns out that Earth’s been in a spot of bother again—it’s only gone and stopped spinning. Typical. The Moon’s gone, too. Deserter. That’s left humanity struggling on this one strip of the planet, while the rest of the world is stuck in a perpetual freezing winter and an endless scorching summer. And they build these Walkers because… they’re cool?

They're used to explore the world, gather resources, build mobile bases and, of course, ram each other and smash enemies into piles of splinters. The clashes from the trailer look stunning, though it remains to be seen if an organic fight will look quite as impressive. 

The larger Walkers need a crew, so survivors will need to band together in clans and form alliances to create armadas and engage in clan warfare. Expect a player-run economy, and players will be able to become traders to take advantage of it, who can then in turn be preyed on by pirates. 

It’s a sandbox affair, so expect to chart your own course instead of following questlines. Everything will be driven by the players, says developer Donkey Crew. It sounds promising! And the Walkers look a lot more complex than the stuff survival MMOs usually task people with crafting. Maybe I’ve got enough patience left in me to learn a few more crafting recipes. 

Last Oasis is launching in Early Access this spring. There's already a Steam page, and you can sign up for the closed beta here.