Star Vikings is a 2D Puzzle/RPG game developed by Rogue Snail.
Story:
You take on the role of a Viking called Thork in an adventure to retrieve back his Table Wedge. It all starts on Thork’s spaceship where he is relaxing and suddenly a bunch of Snails crash into his spaceship kindly ask him to hand over his table wedge in exchange for gold. Thork, of course, gets mad and defeats the Snails then goes back to relax again and listen to his favorite music. His AI Computer O.D.I.N. warns him about an upcoming Alien artifact that will collide with the ship if he doesn’t change course. Thork ignores the warning and keeps listening to his music until they end up crashing with the Alien artifact. More snails infiltrate the ship and keep demanding that Thork hand over the table wedge but he refuses and keep fighting them. Later on, a Pirate Snail approaches O.D.I.N and offers him a huge amount of gold for the Table Wedge and he accepts the offer without telling Thork. Thork finds out later that the Table Wedge has been stolen so he decides to go back and retrieve it. He lands his spaceship on Snail Planet and so the adventure begins.
The story is ridiculous and isn’t meant to be taken seriously. By the end of the game, you won’t remember what the heck was it about but then again this game is more gameplay centric than story-centric but it would have been nice to have a good story.
Visuals:
The visuals of the game are very simple and look like a Mobile game. There is nothing outstanding or stylish in this department More effort could have been done here especially since there are many impressive looking Indie titles nowadays.
Sound:
The sound design is average and again nothing really stands out in this department. The soundtrack is ok. The only good track is the one where you are on the final planet Ragnarok. Its pretty badass and it would have been awesome if the rest of the game had more awesome tracks like it.
Gameplay:
It’s like Plant Vs Zombies but instead of defending, you attack. It tries to mix RPG/Strategy elements.
When you kill an enemy, you gain XP which then makes you gain points. You spend those points on things like leveling up your HP or Energy. Each Viking also has their unique special abilities which need to be used strategically in order to win the level. The unique abilities cost Energy to use so you have to use it wisely as they can only be used a limited amount of times each stage.
You also earn gold in the game which lets you buy things like Potions, hats or recruit new vikings.
Most of the mission objectives go like this, you progress by killing a certain amount of enemies or progress 4 to 5 stages or collect a certain amount of gold. In the end, there is nothing new about the mission structure. You will spend most of the time in the game doing those 3 objectives over and over again and there isn’t much variety on how you do those missions so it will get repetitive and boring fast.
Also, the game got extremely hard at the end to the point where it wasn’t fun anymore. The enemy placement is randomized at the beginning of the mission and that made it almost impossible to beat sometimes and you have to rely on luck to beat it rather than skill.
In the end, the game turns into a grindfest. You will keep playing the beginning levels over and over again just to gain XP or earn enough gold just to progress the advanced levels that have the same enemies but with different colors.
There is very little enemy variety here and all the levels feel the same. It couldnt keep me interest for long.
Length and Replay Value:
The Story mode lasted me 8 hours, once you are done with the story mode. There are The Trials of Valhalla where you play mission earn high scores and compare the score with your friends.
Conclusion:
It’s a simple game but its unfair difficulty spike towards the end is annoying and frustrating especially since the game is procedurally generated and the monster placement is different each time you play the mission You will have to rely on luck instead of skills and hope that you would get easy monster placements throughout the level. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that Star Vikings was designed to be a f2p. Everything felt like the usual f2p elements but for some reason at the last minute, they decided to scrape things like Microtransations and made it a one-time payment instead.
Overall, it’s a fun game for a few hours but nothing was memorable or spectacular about it and for that I give it a 3/5.
