Bad North: Jotunn Edition Demo is available here
Your home is under attack. The king is dead at the hands of Viking invaders. Hope is a distant glimmer in the fog, fading fast with every passing moment. As you rise to take your father’s place as ruler, it will fall to you to stage your defenses. B...
Your home is under attack. The king is dead at the hands of Viking invaders. Hope is a distant glimmer in the fog, fading fast with every passing moment. As you rise to take your father’s place as ruler, it will fall to you to stage your defenses. But make no mistake – this is no fight for victory, but a desperate grasp for survival.
Bad North is a charming but brutal real-time tactics roguelite. Defend your idyllic island kingdom against a horde of Viking invaders, as you lead the desperate exodus of your people. Command your loyal subjects to take full tactical advantage of the unique shape of each island. Everything is at stake: fail, and watch the blood of your subjects stain the ground red.
It’s charmingly brutal, with beautiful procedurally-generated islands and adorable soldiers juxtaposed against the blood-stained realities of war. You control the broad strokes of the battle, giving high level commands to your soldiers who try their best to carry them out in the heat of the moment. It’s accessibly deep, with simple player inputs masking a dynamic combat simulation that make it inviting to new players while challenging veterans.
Keep fighting, warriors. Not for power or riches or glory, but for hope of peace to come once again in the harsh lands of the Bad North.
Key Features: REAL-TIME TACTICS ROGUELITE: Position and relocate your troops to fend off the Vikings, who each have their own counters to the threats you pose. Pick your battles and plan your evacuations carefully! Lose a commander and they’re gone forever; lose everything, and it’s game over!
INTELLIGENT UNIT CONTROLS: You command the broad strokes of your defenses and monitor positioning — your soldiers do the rest, navigating and engaging intuitively in response to the situation at hand.
PROCEDURALLY-GENERATED ISLANDS: Each island is both stylistically charming and unique in its layout. Plan your strategies around every nook and cranny, for you only get one chance to save them from the enemy invasion.
UNLOCKABLE UPGRADES:
A stronger, smarter defense leads to greater rewards. Use these to develop your subjects from a ragtag militia into seasoned warriors.
I bought this game on Discord (where it came out first) to try out the new shop. Bad North has an amazing artstyle, extremely satisfying combat, but lacks some content.
The core gameplay loop is strong, but repetitive and even lots of cool enemy types won't save that. It is great to waste some time with it, but don't expect to sink days into this.
Long story short, the game is about defending your islands against invasion until the invasion stops, then defend the next island.
The "defend" part is basically awesome during your first run. The animations are cute, reaction is immediate - super fun.
The problem is the meta :
- There is an overall lack of diversity in the game : 3 type of units (shielf, pikemen, bowmen) that you can level up 3 times, one secondary skill (always the same for each type of units) and a total of 4 differents artifact to collect... Due to this, the replayability is not huge,
- Despite this, the designers chosed to make the game roguelike, but for the reasons above the gameplay and tactic does not vary enough between several runs,
- If you lose 1 or 2 squads during a mission you can still soldiers on, but losing an island (and the squads with it) is the equivalent of a game over - and sometimes there is little you can do (flat islands in later levels). And since it is rogue-like...
- You cannot really "prepare" for islands : for most of a run you don't have more squads than you can deploy anyway, and even when that happens, while you can strategize depending of the shape of the island, you cannot prepare for the type of enemy who will attack you even though the wrong unit choice can really be disastrous. Due to this, you will always take one unit of pikemen and one unit of swordsmen at the minimum, the "strategic" choice being on whether to take bowmen or not and what to take a second unit of.
As is, the game feels like a great First Playable Publishable, but it lacks content....
... but it will certainly keep you occupied for a couple hours or more, so it all depends on how much you are willing to pay for those 2 hours of intense fun.
Real time medieval island viking minesweeper with gorgeous minimalist graphics. For strategy fans who want a quick, satisfying fix, this game is for you. Fantastic work with the procedural generated levels, RPG lite leveling and item system, and sense of hope and doom as you island hop to the next one. Having played PC games for nearly 30 years, I respectively think this will become a classic. Evocative music, intuitive UI, and worthy corpse splatter keep me saying 'just one more island'.
This is an addictive fast and fun RTS. Cute cel shaded graphics, lovely sound and effects. I hope the devs add a save feature so we can pick up on progress - not always fun to start from scratch
As you may have guessed, the game doesn't offer too much in terms of depth and that is one of it's sellling points, it's minimalistic.
There are three unit types for you (Sword and Boards, Pikes and Archers), about 4 items to give to your commanders to increase their numbers, or give them new skills. Each unit class additionally has 1 unlockable and upgradeable skill each.
There are however some balancing issues (one enemy class is especially annoying), but overall, it's very enjoyable.
I hope this isn't considered spam, but if you want to read up more about the game and maybe create content around the game yourself, feel free to visit the unofficial fanmade wiki: http://badnorth.wikidot.com/
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