Imagine Dragons brothers unveil Night Street Studios’ zany 5v5 team shooter Last Flag

It’s 1970s. The disco is sparkling, the crowd is roaring, and the most spectacular televised competition on the planet is about to begin.

Welcome to Last Flag, a zany shooter game from Night Street Games, an indie game studio cofounded by Mac and Dan Reynolds (the brothers behind the music band Imagine Dragons — Dan is the lead singer and Mac is the manager). It’s a game where fame, fortune, and your flag are all up for grabs. And, yes, there will be Imagine Dragons music.

Two teams. Two hidden flags. One shot at immortality. I played the game and I appreciated the thinking that went into the decisions the team made about the design. The game has been in the works for a couple of years, and it’s clearly a labor of love. It’s not just a couple of music artists trying their hands at gaming. This is a lot more ambitious than that.

In the game, you have five human players fighting against five opposing humans. You have to stash your flag on the map. Then you go out and find the enemy’s flag. You run it back to your base and then have to defend your base for a fixed amount of time. If you outlast the defenders as they try to stop you, then you win the match.

“It originated from Dan and I being in the Boy Scouts and playing capture the flag in the woods at night, and having that kind of quintessential childhood experience, and thinking about all the kind of CTF game modes over the years,” said Mac Reynolds, CEO of Night Street Games, in an interview with GamesBeat. “We realized there was a core missing component. In those games, which was hiding and finding the flag. And so we wanted to make a pure Capture the Flag where you have that flexibility and freedom to make every game different by hiding a flag anywhere you want ,” Mac Reynolds said. “You may want to hide it in a place that is risky but perhaps easier to defend. It changes the playfield every time you play.”

As the game’s description goes, it sounds a lot like the humor of The Finals. The description says, “The world is watching, so don’t forget to do it with style. This isn’t war. This is showbiz.”

I’ve talked to Mac Reynolds, founder of the studio and manager of Imagine Dragons, about the game for months. I also played the game and enjoyed it in its pre-alpha mode. Last Flag is a 5v5 team shooter built to bring capture the flag (CTF) to center stage. It’s fast, it’s fun, and delivers 20 minutes or less of non-stop chaos, clutch comebacks, and buzzer-beating plays, Mac Reynolds said.

It’s not a quiet and stealthy game like a lot of capture-the-flag games are. As I noted, this is zany.

“You don’t get eliminated. You get vacuum-tubed off the set and reappear in the green room, ready to FWOOMP yourself back to a radar tower you control—or straight to your base, the game description says.

I played on an Xbox controller, but some of the functions weren’t finished yet. The console controls will debut when they’re ready, said Mac Reynolds.

“When I was in third grade, my ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’ answer was ‘run a video game studio.’ Oddly specific, but I guess I really meant it,” said Mac Reynolds. “Dan and I grew up playing capture the flag in the woods at night with flashlights, friends, and lots of adrenaline. Last Flag is our attempt to honor the purity and magic of that hide and seek experience—brought to life by the incredible team of developers we’re lucky enough to stand beside.”

Set in a funk-blasted 1970s-inspired universe, Last Flag transforms players into Contestants on the world’s most-watched game show—hosted by the mysterious media mogul Victor Fex.

When the cameras start rolling, players leap into an outdoor arena to hide their team’s flag, then scramble to reveal the enemy’s location by controlling radar towers and scouring the map’s multitude of hidden nooks and crannies.

Capture the Flag is the main event

Capture the flag. Haul it home. Defend it for one minute to win it. Whether you’re celebrating your victory or vibing to the smooth sounds of defeat, you can always choose to run it back.

Built from the ground up for Capture the Flag. Every mechanic—from sneaky flag placement to radar tower intel—is designed to create strategic tension, dramatic reversals, and last-second heroics.

There are 10 contestants and 10 big personalities that remind me of some of the characters of Apex Legends. From Masako, the heavy metal archer who screams as loud as she strikes, to Parker, the speedy scout and his trusty cybernetic falcon, every contestant brings a distinct vibe, playstyle, and dramatic flair.

Whether you’re stealing flags as Soo-Jin, the stealthy master thief, or locking enemies down with Julius Reeves’ Jail Cell—you can dig it—this crew was built to steal the show.

Themed Maps Set the Stage for Epic Action

Each colorful outdoor map was built to encourage exploration, thrilling team fights, and offers plenty of out-of-the-way hiding spots for concealing the flag. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows in Last Flag . . . there may be more than meets the eye.

The game has an original soundtrack by Dan Reynolds and Friends. It has fuzzy guitars, analog synths, and legit 1970s studio magic, crafted with real vintage gear by Dan, Grammy-nominated producer/writer JT Daly (Benson Boone, K.Flay, Bully), and Night Street Games’ own soundsmith Dave Lowmiller (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Battlefield, Dead Space).

The game is casually competitive. No pressure. This isn’t a sweaty tactical shooter. It’s tight, fast, and fun gameplay that’s easy to jump into and hard to put down. Everything is included at launch, with one affordable price. All the fun. Zero pay-to-win.

Last Flag is launching in 2026 on Windows PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store. Console platforms are in the works. Sign up now at LastFlag.com for a shot at becoming the next contestant in the alpha playtest launching later this year.

Night Street Games is an independent game studio co-founded by Mac Reynolds (manager of Imagine Dragons) and his brother Dan (the lead singer), focused on building multiplayer games crafted with heart. Night Street’s talented crew of developers from around the world are working together on Last Flag—a fun-first third-person shooter that aims to deliver the ultimate capture the flag experience.

The basics

I downloaded the game from Steam and fired it up. I joined the devs and playtesters in a Capture the Flag map. The big picture is, find the enemy flag, bring it to your home base, and defend it to win.

In the initial part of the game, both teams take time to hide their flags. When the game starts, you can start taking over radar towers on the map. When you do so, it eliminates an area where the flag might be and helps you zero in on the location. Fighting for those radar towers reminded me of Domination mode in Call of Duty, where teams get in pitched battles over the location takeovers.

“There’s a lot of ways you can contribute to your team,” Mac Reynolds said. “You can hide the flag. You can defend it. You can be looking for the enemy flag, assaulting the base. There’s a payload escort, where you help take the flag back to your home base.

You can hold the F1 key when you’re playing at any point in time, if you want to get a peek at what your abilities are and what the upgrades do. Choosing your character is important. You can play with an assault rifle, a long scout rifle, or long-range archer bow-and-arrow. A teleport gun can transport an enemy to another part of the map.

You can swap characters if you like, even during a match. There are funny characters or weapons like proximity mines and electrified bullets.

The weapons engineer also has this ability where you can teleport any person or thing. If you see an enemy running around you can mark it for your sniper to shoot. The matches last around 15 minutes. The team has been playtesting for a while, and it wants players to sign up for alpha testing.

Mac Reynolds promises that music will be part of the Last Flag experience, where music helps you feel immersed.

“We try and take that philosophy from the music into all the other sounds. We really want every sound you hear to be an opportunity for a moment of joy, a moment of happiness,” Mac Reynolds said.

As far as time to kill, an assault rifle does a lot of damage, but the time to kill is longer compared to something like Call of Duty. The fights can last longer and it is important to hunt in packs. You should also use ultimates and other special weapons to turn the tide in a firefight. Once someone grabs the flag, the tension goes right up and players scramble to stop the flag from getting back to the enemy’s base.

“We try to make it so different heroes thrive in different places. So if you learn to use the weapon in the right situations, you’ll thrive ,” Mac Reynolds said. “So if I’m the bounty hunter, I’ve got to get in close quarters.”

While you want to get to know the contestants, Mac Reynolds said, “We’re very careful not to add too many mechanics, too many things that can make the game a little bit overwhelming or make it hard to, come back.”

He added, “This game has a lot more combat, lots of shooting, respawning, coming back, all that Call of Duty angle. But then somebody takes the flag, and now there’s a huge tension spike as you’re trying to chase the person with the flag, trying to get them down. Oh, you downed them. You’ve returned the flag. And now kind of the tension kind of resets.”