Jotun: Valhalla Edition

Pleasant surprise. + visuals. Very nice art style + story and narration. Simple story but fits well with norse setting and narration in icelandic (i think) adds so much to the atmosphere + memorable boss fights - combat is ok but could have been way better - your character is so small compared to the bosses you will barely see her during boss fights - last boss is just brutally difficult..never beaten him - too short Overall 7/10 overall really good with some big flaws

Jotun is a very atmospheric game, with wonderful hand drawn graphics and good music and sound effects. I also liked the fact that the dialogue are spoken in Icelandic, giving that extra touch in the atmospheric department. The story is not the best, but quite engaging anyway. You even get to know some of the great old norse mythology as you progress through the game. The gameplay however is not very engaging. Thora, the main protagonist moves as a snail. The two possible attacks are the standard fast and weak, and the slow and strong. The strong one is however very slow. On some puzzles in the game it is needed to use the slow attack on different objects. These puzzles just seems very dull as they take a lot of time to complete due to Thoras movement speed and slow attack. The fighting is sparse and when they do occur feel rather lame. Thora is equipped with the mandatory dodge roll which I found my self spamming to move faster. I do not know if it had any impact or not. I did not find the puzzles or the combat very hard as I only died a couple of times and all of the deaths were on the two final bosses. In the end Jotun is a very atmospheric puzzle game but a rather dull one.

I think I would enjoyed this more if I read this as a short graphic novel or something? Just not that much to do in this game and what I did wasn't in anyway pulse pounding exciting for a hack and slasher.

Had tons of potential, I just don't understand why there are no enemies across the levels. Looks like an incomplete game in alpha stage! If they add normal enemies and not just bosses, I think it could have been a pretty great game. I don't see how it is fun in the present stage. The bosses I encountered were fun. NEEDS POPULATION OF NORMAL ENEMIES! Why, why are they not around! Take the goombas and turtles away from Super Mario, and you get a non-game. I don't understand. I can only assume the game is unfinished or has some bug that removes normal enemies altogether... If this was the developer vision, I await the Enemy Edition: this time with enemies!

The game has a beautiful handdrawn style, the music fits the theme....but there isn't really much to do. It's more of a meditative journey than a game. Unless you fight one of the bosses, then it gets frustrating. The controls are too stiff, the hitboxes are wonky, and there isn't any mechanic in place that keeps bosses from using combinations of their skills that will damage you no matter what. It's more a question of luck than skill.