Bad North

This is a nice RTS game with some pretty funny styling (it may be silly, but seeing your little dudes die is always funny to me) where you progress in the viking age by recruiting bands of warriors and specializing them into three classes of spearmen, warriors and archers. Not too hard if you don't want it to be and the mechanics are rewarding once you figure them out. The game does not last very long and once you learn the mechanics are not too hard so the replayability aspect is not too great, but the game is good for what it is.

Bad North is a game that consists of defending your island... and that's pretty much it. It plays in real-time and you control a few units, but you can only really move them to squares where they will perform their attacks or defenses. The game has a roguelite campaign that reminds me a lot of Slay the Spire, you start with 2 basic units and after you complete a level you gain some gold and you can upgrade them to a class (the 3 classes are the aggressive Infantry, the defensive Pikemen and the ranged Archer). As you advance you might get to recruit other units (you can bring a maximum of 4 per battle) and there's also the possibility of acquiring items to equip your units and also upgrading them so they have a special activated ability.

And that's pretty much the gist of the game. But despite the simplicity, it's extremely hard even on the easy level I wasn't able to complete the game. This is a roguelite so if one of your units dies it's permadeath, and all that gold upgrading it is now wasted. During your runs, some recruitable units might acquire a passive buff, which you will be able to start with on your next campaign. Still very minimal progress is done from run to run, I think it lacks the excitement that a roguelite can bring of being just a little stronger than your last run. My rough estimate is that there is about 30 levels to clear, and reaching the halfway point the enemies definitely get very stronger and quite annoying.

I can't say I'm terribly impressed by this game, I can understand the appeal but I'm not very thrilled about doing the same thing over and over again. There's just not that much to do, and it doesn't take long before you see all the possibilities the game has to offer (upgrades in class or abilities is extremely limited), I think the game needs to do a little bit more to keep things exciting. I can't say that it's particularly bad as it does what it aims to do pretty well, but perhaps this isn't exactly the game for me.