Created by Brian A Liberge (who we last saw around here flying with Ace Adventure, although odds are solid you’ve seen them since doing things like running the East coast PAXi chapters of Games on Demand or doing charity actual plays with Dungeons & Drag Nuns) and published by Luck of the Harbor, Last Kiss is a game of decidedly unplucky teenagers making poor choices born of inexperience, trying to figure themselves out in a world that is as absolutely doomed as it is only allegedly normal.

The player characters are literally the Main Characters, the ones who think they’re the most important people around (as teenagers are wont to do). The facilitator for the game is playing all of the Side Characters, but is also playing the darkness, the nebulous force that is going to destroy the world at the end of the game but wants to have Fun with the MCs first.

MCs don’t have much in the way of stats, but what they do have are Labels. Labels are how characters view a particular MC, including that MC themself (it’s a little like Masks, that way, although there’s no numerical rating for them). Each character starts with one Label granted by their Powered by the Apocalypse-style playbook, such as the Juggernaut starting with Foolish and the Horror beginning with Covetous. Each MC also starts with one Label that is also their gender, although the genders available (there’s a different list of starter options for each playbook) are so creative that the binary isn’t even in the rear view mirror – Goth Diner Waitress, Dude, Barrier, Executive Enby, Mermaid, Boy Wife Material, Muscle Mommy, something thrust upon you, a gender you found and then made 30% of your personality…

Labels can be cleared or changed or added, but if you get too many of them you actually end up with Trauma that becomes the biggest part of your personality and can only be healed by roleplaying out a scene; the game makes a point to highlight that thia means that your gender can change and even become your Trauma over the course of the game.

The game will take place in one of several provided towns, all of which are not quite right and showing signs of (probably?) mundane decay. One example is Hecate, halfway up a mountain and centered around a long-abandoned megachurch that most of the older town members used to belong to but none of you can remember being open. The high school is strangely set on a cliff, and the Vice Principal is the mayor’s first cousin. For another example, Exit only exists on US-90 to give people ‘a place to get gas and piss’. If you’re too astute, though, you’ll notice that it seems to be the same people driving through every day… anyway, the high school is a bunch of modular buildings next to a modern school that never got cleared for occupancy for some reason, and the vice principal is oddly germaphobic and is running an overbearing handwashing campaign.

Many disputes in the school, from who is taking who to prom to who has to do the most work in a group assignment, are going to be resolved by duels. Duels are a perfectly normal part of culture here in Not Weird Town! They’re not allowed on school grounds, though. They’ll probably still happen on school grounds sometimes, though.

Last Kiss calls out Revolutionary Girl Utena and I Saw The TV Glow as inspirations. Now, I haven’t seen I Saw The TV Glow (yet, now that I know about it), but when it comes to Utena… well, it may have been a long time since it crossed my radar but, oh yeah, that inspiration is as clear as day. Very surreal, very emotionally messy, very queer.

The facilitator moves are broken up into a few categories. Free moves are ones that you can do all the time, like Describe A World of Shadows to highlight the 1%… alright 5% of the world that’s just a little bit weird, or Take the Bait to jump on something that the Main Characters are getting up to. Cold moves are for when the darkness is ’embracing their power to control the world’, like Fulfill A Threat (somewhat self-explanatory), Reveal an Uncomfortable Truth (same, with examples like a character’s boyfriend has been cheating on them or the school’s theater budget has been secretly spent on football), and Establish a Cultural Norm (which all the Side Characters know has always been the way things are, while the Main Characters might notice it hasn’t).

Cruel moves are the darkness at its strongest, typically letting it do things without build-up or warning, like Make the World Dangerous Without Warning or Reveal a New Side Character. Special moves exist, but the only example is the Surreal Scene Shift which can wrap up a scene and drop the characters into the next one; again, Side Characters won’t notice anything, but Main Characters might just twig to the fact that they’re time-skipping.

On the Main Character side there are no ‘basic moves’ that everyone has access to. Rather, each MC has a mostly-unique set of mostly-always-useable Everyday Moves and then options for Exceptional Moves. I say mostly-always-usable because they’re very much of the Belonging Outside of Belonging school of moves, in that (many) of them deal with a metacurrency, named here as Main Character Energy (MCE). The ones that don’t are put under the umbrella of ‘Never hesitate to’, and are things the character can always do. Others require that MCE be spent before they can be used in the story, and others allow a MC to gain MCE. I say mostly-unique because you might see the same move on multiple types of Main Character, but they’re often under a different umbrella. None of these have any other mechanics to them, they’re purely narrative actions.

Exceptional Moves are truly unique to each playbook, and you don’t have access to all of the ones listed – you start with one preset one, and then can choose another one. Some of them provide new ways to spend MCE, or allow you to introduce something new to the story. Others are where the PbtA DNA pops up by calling for a roll of 2d6, although with a bit of Apocalypse Keys flavor added in. These kinds of Exceptional Moves will add either the number of Labels you have or the number of MCE you have (now’s a good as time as any to mention you can have a maximum of three for either of them). You succeed if your total is from 8-10, and miss if your total is 7 or less (do note that the average of 2d6 is 7, so a slight number charge in the range here makes a big difference). If your total is 11 or higher, though, you Break the Barrier: you succeed, sure, but the darkness makes it clear that the end of the world is inevitable.

In short, you’ve got an interesting balancing act going on here – if you don’t have enough of an identity or enough Main Character Energy you’re going to be missing, but too many Labels or MCE and you’re going to feel like you’re playing the Too Much card over and over again.

Let’s look at some examples, shall we?

The Chairperson is someone with power and/or influence, like a member of the Student Council or a star on the football field. They Never Hesitate To do things like Pursue Control of Another, Use [Their] Position for Comfort, and Assign a Reasonable Task to a Side Character (SC). They have to spend MCE to do things like Assign an Unreasonable Task to a SC, Overstep Established Authority, and Take the Blame. They gain MCE by doing things to Cede A Duel, Carelessly Set Someone Else Up to Fail, and Use Sex As Leverage. They start with the Exceptional Move Influencer that lets them spend MCE to give any character (including themselves) a Label, and can choose to try and make someone who has slighted them Taste My Power with a dominant, assertive kiss – gaining MCE and giving a Label if they accept it, allowing them to clear 1 harm and letting the darkness make a Cold move if it is rejected.

The Unfortunate is someone who knows the darkness is coming, and worse knows that they’re the key to ending the world. They Never Hesitate to do things like Act To Comfort Another, Ignore A Side Character, and Tell Yourself A Harm Is Good. They have to spend MCE to do things like Join A Scene Unnoticed, Speak A Dark Truth, and Admit to Someone You Can’t Do It Alone. They gain MCE by doing things like choosing to Ignore Your Sexual Needs, Lie to Make the Darkness Seem Lesser, and Exhaust Yourself Caring For Others. They start with the Exceptional Move Deflect Duel, which lets them try to ask someone else to take their place in a duel. To ask a Main Character they have to offer a MCE in exchange; a Side Character who is asked automatically accepts, but then the Unfortunate has to choose to let the darkness make a Cold move or transfer a Label to the Side Character. Another Exceptional Move is Unending Love Affair, declaring another character to be your love: you don’t have to offer them a MCE when they are selected for Deflect Duel, when they tag one of your labels they automatically Break the Barrier,  and if they die in a duel the winner becomes your new love. Not twisted enough? “You are not required to feel love for your love.”

The Witch is someone who grew up with a different kind of darkness, something that made them judged from before they even knew themself, capable of bending reality. They Never Hesitate to do things like Justify Unfair Change, Cede A Duel, and Steal in Secret. They spend MCE to do things like Stand Up For Who You Are, Trust Someone Else to Aid You, and Push Past The Limits of Who You Think You Are. They can gain MCE by doing things like Flirt With Someone Who Ignored You, Trauma Dump on Someone, and Take an Obviously Dangerous Action Alone. They start with the Exceptional Move Shadow Weaving, rolling plus MCE when you tap into the darkness, casting a spell to change reality (i.e. get to use a facilitator Cold move). On a Success you immediately text someone about it, on a Miss you still manage it but it’s messy with additional consequences, and if you Break the Barrier the darkness supercharges your spell with a Cruel move. They might also gain Arcane Duel, which first of all adds Declare a Duel to the Never Hesitate To options for Everyday Moves. During the actual duel, you can roll + Labels if you’re disguising your magic and + MCE if you’re being obvious about it. A success forces your opponent to mark a hit box and asks them to cede, a miss makes you describe how you fail and triggers a Cold move. Breaking the Barrier? Your opponent fills a hit box and you gain one MCE, and then you choose: the darkness either gets to make a Side Character notice you – like notice you notice you, the darkness makes a Cruel move against someone it perceives to be your enemy, or you heal 1 and the darkness uses a Cruel move to change the world.

Last Kiss keeps encouraging you to be messy, to be a little uncomfortable, to be a bit transgressive. Go back and read all of those examples if you need to, because all of the mechanical and writing choices I’m seeing here seem well-suited to enabling exactly what the game is telling us it wants. We keep saying we want more devastating games, and Last Kiss looks primed to deliver.

$15 will get you the PDF, as well as immediate access to the Quickstart rules that cover everything I wrote about here and more, including the rules for a one-shot. $30 will toss in the physical version. There are some extra pledge tiers (and add-on options) for getting every PDF Luck of the Harbor offers from Ace Adventure to Warrenguard, a retailer option, and a play-a-game-with-Brian-and-get-your-name-in-the-book. Stretch goals include adding more main character types (two already!), a new town example town, rules for making a town of your own, and additional art. The crowdfunding for Last Kiss on Backerkit will end on Dec 1, 2025 at 3:01pm EST.

Everything is Hopeless. Darkness is encroaching. The end is inevitable. but… you get to decide what makes the story worth telling anyway.