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/