If you name a Viking Johnny5, you can follow his progression through each level as you move through the game. Some minor attention to detail really does the game well such as the ability to change your Viking’s names. Yet, isn’t that precisely what makes these games a challenge? It’s getting things to work the way you want that is the puzzle worth solving leading to your progression and, ultimately, victory. Like any game that stops short of full control over the units, Valhalla Hills can get frustrating when the AI doesn’t respond in a way that you hoped. Additionally, players can shut down a building to force Vikings to work elsewhere. Within each building there are little elements that can be tweaked such as how many Vikings will be trained or assigned to the building. Build a tent and you have access to more Vikings. Build a woodcutter and your Vikings start chopping wood and bringing it to the structure. Combined with the procedurally generated islands, players will have a bit of a fresh experience with each play-through. While this is not so advanced that it makes a huge difference after hours of progression, it does present a nice twist to the early levels. To that end, Funatics designed an interesting adaptive unlock system that presents players with new options based on how they play the game. The goal is to ease the player into the gameplay while keeping things interesting. Your first island is fairly simple but each island thereafter becomes more challenging as the player hops into each portal. As the islands get larger and more options become available to the player, the portals unleash more and more difficult creatures. I found this to be a great way to unleash the player’s creativity while retaining an easy to understand structure for the gameplay. Unlike many games in the strategy sim genre, Valhalla Hills leans more on the end goal of getting the Vikings to the portal on each level rather than accomplishing quests, missions, or storyline elements. Of course, the game provides military structures to help train warriors and equip them with weapons so they can battle these evil creatures. If unprepared, your Vikings will all be killed and your progression will end. The challenge of course is that when the portal is opened, monsters pour out and begin assaulting your Vikings. At the top of each island, there is a portal gate which the Vikings must first discover (by walking nearby) and then open to progress to the next island, and, ultimately Valhalla itself. You start out on a small island with very few building options and resources around. And then you are given your first handful of Viking failures with which to build and journey to Valhalla. Firing up the game, you are presented with an affectionate cut scene explaining Leko’s backstory. Perhaps you could say it is roguelike-like, but at what point does the description even mean anything anymore? We’ll leave the buzzwords to the marketers and just enjoy a good game, which Valhalla Hills is shaping up to be.įans of Settlers 2 will enjoy Valhalla Hills playstyle, as will just about anyone who likes strategy sims. Some have stated that there is a roguelike mechanic but the game’s procedural generation and adaptive unlocks do not make a roguelike. Procedurally generated maps work to keep the game fresh, but Valhalla Hills does more to streamline the sim builder experience than to move it forward. While a bit light on strategy, Valhalla Hills checks all the boxes of a strategy sim game while providing some interesting new twists. While the premise is a bit convoluted, it does provide a passable explanation as to why you build stuff and manipulate little Vikings as you go. Leko, unable to attain entry to Valhalla, gathers the fallen Vikings who share his fate and are determined to build, survive, and battle their way back into the gates. Odin, disgusted with Leko’s interest in bricks rather than more Vikingly pastimes like drinking mead and eating roasted wild boar, casts his son out of Valhalla and throws up some gates to keep him out. Leko failed as a god due to his interest in, you guessed it, building things. Entering Steam Early Access in August 2015, Valhalla Hills puts you in the role of Leko, an outcast son of Odin.
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