Bad North is a cute, unusually strategic combat game where you command different legions of troops in order to defend your islands from oncoming swarms of vikings while moving across an archipelago, constantly trying to stay ahead of the fleet on your tail.

The artstyle is quite fun, with small humble houses and little silly figures. The simple design of characters has some cool smaller details too, such as small crowns on your commanders, blood splatters on terrain, and shield units moving their shield towards incoming arrows, making it feel surprisingly accurate. Despite the relatively gruesome concept, the artstyle remains simplistic and cute, with satisfying animations and enjoyable combat!

While the art style is simplistic and cute, there’s a vast amount of nuance when it comes to strategies and combat. Where you position your units vastly changes your stance in a fight, and using choke points or high ground to your advantage will increase your chance of making your little warriors go the extra mile. You can push enemies off cliffs with pikes, resulting in damage and forcing them to come back, sometimes even pushing them off the island. Arrows rarely do damage against shield units, but if you position them perpendicular to an oncoming boat, the inflicted knockback can push them and their allies into the water. Landing ships can even stun your units if they’re directly on the shore when they arrive, which is a surprising realistic mechanic. I personally enjoy how no specific type of troop is individually powerful, but rather is strong when incorporated well into the other classes you have at your disposal. When placed efficiently and used effectively, every type of unit can shine. The strategy of combat is by far the best part of this game, and don’t let its other parts distract you from how enjoyable a well-thought-out defense can feel when it effectively stymies the vast hordes of enemy forces.

There's also quite a bit of cool equipment and innate commander traits that you can discover as you progress, that can add some cool new strategies to your arsenal. Everything from calling reinforcements mid-battle, to increasing knockback to better batter your enemies around, to straight up deployable landmines.

Overall, I found myself enjoying this game a decent amount more than I expected! It's got its own unique kind of charm that makes each battle exciting. Bad North is a fun and surprisingly deep little strategy game, great for taking a break from mainstream gaming or when you have a little time to spare!

great game! very minimalist but deep. it is a very punishing rougelike if you get greedy. im very greedy. i want to take every island and that means splitting your forces which is extremely punishing if done wrong and can set you up for failure. it’s a low reward to high risk often times. does that mean i don’t push it? god no! we gotta take all the islands and kill every viking invader and collect all the gold and treasure and item!

9/10 just could use a speed up button.