If you’ve listened to your car radio at any point in the last decade, you’re almost certainly at least aware of the band Imagine Dragons. Best-known for hits like Radioactive, Demons, Believer, and Thunder, Imagine Dragons are among the best-selling and most decorated bands worldwide. Like them, love them, dislike them, whatever – just about everyone knows their music.
What they’re not known for is making video games. But band manager Mac Reynolds and his brother, lead singer Dan Reynolds, want that to change.
Back in 2020, the brothers founded Night Street Games, a new studio built to facilitate their other passion in life: game development. Speaking to Reynolds at the Game Developers Conference last March, he described making games as a “life long dream” that he and his brother have been quietly dabbling in for years now.
“Dan and I, we played a ton of games together [growing up]. And for us, I'm really dating myself now, but even in the Commodore 64 days all the way to Sierra. I was sneaking in the other room to call the Sierra helpline. And from there on, LucasArts and Delphine, where we would just wait for the next game. I remember playing Another World and Flashback came out and I needed to get it. And those games played a big part of our childhood and for me then, GoldenEye, that was a pivotal moment. So Dan and I, gaming was in our DNA. I even found this paper in my office just a couple months ago. Never remembered this at all. It was from third grade and it was like, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And it said, ‘I want to run a game studio.’”
Of course, the brothers ended up in music instead, but Reynolds says their passion for games continued. The two still played and discussed games regularly. Mac learned 3D modeling and animation, and Dan learned how to code. And as a band, Imagine Dragons have done a number of collaborations with major games over the years, from writing a song for Starfield to playing Zelda music at The Game Awards with composer Koji Kondo, from composing the opening theme for Arcane to underscoring the Nintendo Switch’s Superbowl commercial. Dan Reynolds has even published a small, experimental game already, on itch.io.
With that context in mind, then, it’s hardly surprising that Imagine Dragons’ founders might eventually try their hands at game development. And they’re not doing it alone. Night Street Games consists of roughly 25 people, including multiple Activision Blizzard veterans with experience on games such as Diablo 3, World of Warcraft, and Heroes of the Storm. And they’ve partnered with Ukrainian studio Argentics to make Last Flag, a third-person hero shooter that is centered around a game show-style rendition of Capture the Flag, inspired by Dan and Mac’s childhood memories:
“Dan and I, we used to play Capture the Flag in the woods at night as Boy Scouts and had great memories and very much enjoyed some of the various Capture the Flag game modes over the years from Quake to Unreal Tournament to Warsong Gulch to whatever,” Reynolds recalls. “And I reflected on the fact that none of those really got to that heart of what it meant to hide and to find, and the magic of being in nature and sneaking around and being a hero. When Capture the Flag is an afterthought or a game mode, it tends to really be predictable bases, predictable locations.
“And so we started with this theory of: what would a pure Capture the Flag game feel like? And quickly found a couple things, which is number one, hiding and finding is super fun. It makes the experience different every single time. But number two, there are some challenges to that unpredictability. And you need to have a very thoughtful structure to be able to make it feel more like poker and less like roulette where if you play your cards right, you really have a good shot at winning regardless of how lucky somebody gets in finding the flag. And so that developed into what is today a game where everything from the ground up, from the core game mechanics, to the level design, to the heroes and their abilities is all centered around how to have the best Capture the Flag experience.”
Like the game it’s based on, Last Flag is conceptually simple: two teams of five, each side has a flag that they hide somewhere on their side. When the game starts, each team must try and find the opponent’s flag and bring it back to their own base, then defend it for one minute to win the game, all while protecting their own flag. Last Flag throws in a few twists, such as towers around the map that can be captured in order to narrow down the flag’s location, and of course the unique abilities of each member of the roster of heroes, all of which can be upgraded throughout the match. There are 10 playable characters at launch, each with a unique kit: there’s an archer, a thief, a scout with a cyber falcon partner, and more.
“Part of the magic in discovery is learning how to play the heroes in unexpected ways,” Reynolds explains. “Then there's all these fun shareable moments that get created by people discovering new synergies between some of the abilities or discovering new ways to use them or looking at a situation that's completely novel and being like, ‘Oh crap, you know what I bet I could do?’ And to me, that's some of the most fun. You get some of that in games that we love. You get some of that in the wildness of Team Fortress 2 or the over-the-top games of Super Smash Bros. where you have those moments you want to talk about and clip and share. We hope to create a lot of those.”
Reynolds and his team have big plans for Last Flag long-term. The game’s frame story is that of a 1970s dystopian game show run by a mysterious media mogul, and Reynolds hints to me that there may be a grander story waiting to play out over time, perhaps with nods to he and his brother’s love of ARGs. There’s also plenty of room to add new elements: new characters, new stages, or even new gameplay elements. Reynolds does suggest that while exact pricing hasn’t been decided on yet, he expects Last Flag to be a one-time, premium purchase game as opposed to a free-to-play game with microtransactions.
Last Flag is planned for launch in 2026 on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, and there’s a PC alpha planned later this year. When I ask Reynolds about a Nintendo Switch 2 release at GDC in March, he tells me he doesn’t have access to a dev kit just yet, but hopefully that’s changed by the time this piece publishes. Reynolds confirms the game is in development for console as well, so expect those other platform releases sometime later down the line. He and Night Street expect to be working on Last Flag for some time to come. He and his brother aren’t just musicians anymore, after all. They’re musicians and game developers.
“This is not a side project,” Reynolds says. “This is the next chapter of our lives.”
You can catch up on everything announced at Summer Game Fest right here, and stick with us for everything coming this weekend from IGN Live.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
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