INTRO:
Faster Than Light opened a slew of opportunities – or a can of worms. With rogue-lites, indie developers who do not have the technical skills to implement actual game-saving features have an excuse not to do so. With rogue-lites, players who deem game-saves to be the refuge of the weak-minded actually have something to prove.
For better or worse, BAD NORTH is one such rogue-lite. Its computer version also happens to be a port of the original mobile version.
Fortunately, its gameplay is decently sophisticated, barring a few poor design decisions.
PREMISE:
The game is set in a fictitious version of medieval British Isles, presumably somewhere around the ninth century. The war between the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings were at their fiercest; in this game, the Vikings have the upper hand, and are laying waste to the Saxons’ island homes.
The player is the disembodied commander of the Saxons, specifically the ones who live on the isle that is furthest to the west. They are in the way of the leading edge of the Viking onslaught, and must leave lest they are overwhelmed.
However, they are only delaying the inevitable. With their superior skill at sailing, the Vikings will eventually catch up. On the other hand, the Saxons still have a chance; if they can gather their kin and grow their strength, they might be able to withstand the Viking waves.
ROGUE-LITE:
For better or worse, there is no manual game-saving feature. There is only one auto-save slot for each playthrough, and the auto-save is only updated in the island selection screen. Fortunately, BAD NORTH does not repeat Faster Than Light’s mistake of consuming save files after loading them for a play session.
Therefore, it is possible for the player to save-scum in two ways. First, the player could locate the game-save files and make backups of them. Second, the player can just close the game outright when something goes wrong in the defence of an island. Besides, no game-saves are made at all during island defence.
TURNS & ONSLAUGHT ADVANCE:
The pacing of the gameplay is governed by turns. In every turn, the player deploys units to islands to defend them. After having done that, the player ends the current turn. The Vikings’ main onslaught then advances.
The advancement of the onslaught is tracked via the partitioning of the isles. The island selection screen shows these partitions, which are labelled according to the number of turns that would be had in the playthrough. This gives the player some forewarning about which islands would be permanently lost to the onslaught. These lost islands cannot be returned to and will no longer serve as staging areas to reach the next islands.
FATIGUE:
Island-to-island warfare is tiring; this is the excuse that is used to implement a system that limits the use of units that the player has. When any unit has been used to defend an island and it survives, it will be fatigued, regardless of how much that it did in the battle. Fatigued units cannot be used for any other battles within the same turn.
Therefore, the player will need to divvy his/her units wisely – which is easier said than done due to certain vagaries in how the player gets new units. There will be more elaboration on this later.
LAYOUT OF ISLANDS:
The map selection screen only shows a top-down 2D image of the islands, which is not enough for strategic planning. Fortunately, the player can load the instance that would be used for the defence of the island and examine its layout in 3D. This is crucial, because funnelling and bottle-necking the Vikings is the key to victory.
In particular, the player will want to take note of any cliff-sides. These block the movement of units, and the particularly high ones will prevent archers in lower elevations from attacking anyone on higher elevations (though not vice versa).
The player will also want to take note of any slopes. These are how units move from one elevation to another. The tops of slope also happen to be handy places for choke-points.
VIKINGS LANDING:
Last, but not least, are the beaches of the island. These are where the Vikings would land their boats on. Each Viking boat will take up space, preventing another boat from landing in the same spot. This means that the player could estimate where the next boat would come from.
Speaking of where the boats come from, they appear from the mists surrounding the island. The player will need to rotate the camera about in order to spot them. The boats always move in straight lines, so the player could predict where they would land. This is important, because preventing the Vikings from moving elsewhere other than into the arms of the player’s Saxons is key to containing them.
The difficulty setting determines the frequency of the landings. Usually, the landings are spaced out enough for the player to see what’s coming and give the player enough time to send units over to deal with them – assuming that the player has been able to deal with the earlier waves. Indeed, failure to deal with the earlier waves quickly will doom the island.
HOMES:
Speaking of doom for the island, the Vikings are more interested in burning the homes of the Saxons than going after the player’s units. Indeed, after they have landed, most of them will go after the nearest house to torch it.
Each house can take a few dozen torches before it blows up. Although it looks like it is burning, there is no damage over time; only the torches that landed count as having inflicted damage. However, there is no way to restore its durability.
The main reason to prevent the houses from being burnt down is the gold that they would grant after the Viking waves have been defeated. This is the player’s main reward for having defended an island; the number of Vikings killed is not a factor in determining the level of reward.
There are a couple of other uses for houses, which will be described later. Suffice to say, it is in the player’s interest to save as many of the houses as possible. However, the layout of the island may be such that some houses are just too close to the beach to be easily defensible. In the later islands and higher difficulty setting, the player might have to give up on saving the isolated ones.
MOVING AROUND THE TILES:
Each island is composed of square tiles, though rounded edges for the tiles partially hide this. Units do not have to strictly follow the orientation of the tiles as they move about. However, when they stop, they will have to occupy the nearest tile, unless there happens to be something of greater priority, like fighting enemies. (The Vikings, of course, never stop for anything other than to fight or torch houses.)
When the player directs a unit to move, it will follow the path of least distance to the destination, regardless of anything that might be in the way. This can result in units running into the Vikings, which would be bad if they are anything but militia or infantry. Fortunately, the path that they would take is shown to the player, so the player is forewarned about any risk of running into enemies.
FLANKING:
In the later isles of the playthrough, the Saxons will have to perform flanking manoeuvres, because the waves often have boats with both ranged and melee Vikings coming in close. The player will need to trick the ranged Vikings to stay in a spot and attack one of the player’s Saxons (preferably Infantry), while some other Saxon checks the advance of the melee Vikings.
This is easier said than done, due to the lack of any means to set waypoints. The player also needs to micro-manage the paths that flanking units would take, in order to avoid attracting the attention of any Vikings.
SLOW-MOTION:
Battling the Vikings can be hectic, so the player has one advantage: slowing down time. Slow-down occurs whenever the player selects a unit, and ends when the player has given an order to the unit. Slow-down can also occur whenever the player holds down the control input that has been dedicated to it.
Indeed, judicious use of the slow-down feature can help a lot in managing the advance of the Vikings across multiple locations.
COVER:
There are ranged units, such as the archers and the brute crossbowmen of the Vikings. Ranged attacks involve solid projectiles with actual hitboxes, so it is possible for units under fire to go behind a solid obstacle to avoid being hit.
Several things on an island act as cover. Elevated ground, such as small hills, can be cover. The later islands also have chest-high walls that provide partial cover. Houses also act as cover.
Ranged units will not attack any enemies that are well behind cover. However, the player will want to be mindful of the line of sight that they can draw to any potential targets. For example, a small hill of just one tile in width and length will only block ranged attacks if it is directly in between the ranged unit and its target.
Pieces of cover are opaque, remaining so even if there are units behind them relative to the orientation of the camera. This can complicate attempts to locate units that are not visible to the player, especially Viking ranged units.
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS:
Each unit in the game, be it Viking or Saxon, comes as either one individual or a group of people; the latter is more common. In the case of the latter, the group tries to maintain cohesion as they move.
Each person in a group contributes to the damage output of the group. Therefore, a group that has been whittled down has substantially reduced damage, as well as being easier to wipe out.
In the case of the player’s units, they are led by named unit leaders. There will be more on unit leaders later, though it should be said here that unit leaders tend to be the last individual to go down in their groups.
SEPARATION:
Units that are groups of soldiers may be separated if they are waylaid by enemies. It is also possible for the player’s soldiers to end up getting stuck on terrain features, especially at the bottom or the top of slopes.
In the case of the player’s units, this is particularly bad. For example, it is possible for the unit leader to get separated from his/her group and get killed. Nevertheless, isolated individuals will attempt to join their comrades if they could.
INDIVIDUAL HEALTH:
Each person in a unit has his/her own health meter. This is not shown to the player, but is represented by the amount of bloodstains on their persons. There is no way to restore their health.
This should be kept in mind when using a certain special ability that calls in reinforcements from houses. Although the reinforcing soldiers are fresh, the injured ones in the unit remain hurt.
REPLENISHING:
Intact houses can be used to replenish the ranks of units that have suffered casualties. Any injured individuals are also healed. (Presumably, the people in the houses are giving medical aid to the injured, or are given crash courses on how to fight and then replacing the injured and dead.)
However, replenishment can take a while. Furthermore, it does not matter how many casualties that a unit has suffered; replenishment always takes the same amount of time.
It is not something to be done without considering how vulnerable the island would be if units are taken out of the fight to restore them. However, if the player wants to be able to weather the waves of Vikings, the player will need to rotate out units for replenishment. For this reason, it is in the player’s interest to have multiples of the same unit type; unit types will be described later.
UNIT LEADERS:
The player’s units are led by named characters. The player starts with a few of them. There are others that the player would find on some of the islands, presumably leading the local defence. These people will join the player’s army after the player has chosen to defend their islands from the Viking vanguard.
During battles, the unit leaders are represented as people wielding swords and bearing flags on their backs. The unit leaders do not have the same equipment as the soldiers that they are leading. This is important to keep in mind. One reason is that in the case of spearmen and archers, the unit leaders are the only ones that can attack on the move.
The unit leader’s current location is also considered as the centre of the radius of any special ability that the unit has. If the unit leaders are separated from their groups, this can affect the use of their special abilities.
MILITIA:
The militia is basic unit of the Saxons. Most of the player’s units in the early parts of the playthrough start as these. They are armed with swords, but can do little else and are not particularly durable. However, their main value is that they can be promoted into any of the three other units that are available to the player. In fact, their promotions are the only options that the player has for deciding the composition of the player’s forces.
INFANTRY:
The Infantry are practically Militia with shields and more health. Like Militia, they can fight on the move. Their main value lies in their shields; these allow them to block attacks by enemy archers. However, their shields can only be oriented towards a single direction. If there are incoming shots from other directions, they will be hit. Individual soldiers also cannot block too many hits in too short a time; the projectiles eventually get through.
Infantry can gain the ability to plunge from higher elevation to lower elevations, inflicting considerable damage. This ability can land them in trouble (pun intended), especially if the player has not isolated the targeted enemies from the others. Nonetheless, this ability can also be used to bypass the limitations on unit movement, namely going down a cliff in order to flank an enemy.
PIKEMEN:
Pikemen are intended to be used against melee Vikings. Incidentally, the Vikings do not have any pikemen of their own.
The main value of the Pikemen is their ability to push away enemies with their attacks. If there are enough Pikemen, they can prevent melee Vikings from even getting close enough to hit them, thus eventually poking the latter to death. Furthermore, if the player has placed them carefully above slopes, it is possible to push enemies of the slopes to a gravity-inflicted demise.
However, Pikemen cannot attack on the move, and all melee Vikings have been programmed to know this. The player can expect melee Vikings to immediately attack any Pikemen that go on the move if they are nearby.
Pikemen can learn the ability to charge in straight lines. Anyone caught in their charge takes considerable damage and are immediately knocked down or pushed out of the way. However, they need time and space to set up their charging stance, during which they are vulnerable to being attacked.
ARCHERS:
Archers are the only ranged units that the player can have. Ammunition is not a concern for the archers, but that is unfortunately just about the only advantage that they have.
The archers fire a flight of arrows, each of which has its own hitbox and trajectory. The trajectories are randomly distributed such that their hit-zones are contained within a circle. However, enemies have to be below the arrows when they land. Otherwise, the arrows completely miss and are wasted. Hitting moving Viking is even more difficult. Furthermore, there are many Vikings that are resistant to arrows, not least of which are the ones with shields.
The archers have the ability to rain arrows vertically onto a tile on the island; these arrows cannot be deflected with shields. This ability is more effective than their default attacks, yet the Archers could have been more effective if this ability was their default attack and their special ability has been something else instead.
Overall, the player is better off having other units instead of archers. They just cannot reliably inflict damage on the Vikings.
CAN ONLY TARGET TILES ON ISLAND:
Special abilities can only ever be directed at tiles on the island. This is understandable in the case of the special abilities of the Infantry and Pikemen, since they can only fight on land. However, that the Archers cannot use theirs on Vikings that are still on their boats is not as excusable.
PAYING UNITS:
At the end of every successful island defence, the player is given an amount of gold that depends on the number and size of the houses that the player has saved. Then, the player has to divvy the gold among the unit leaders.
This is an odd design, especially for a rogue-lite. Most other games would just have currencies going into a counter that the player can draw from, because it is a simpler design that gives the player the most options on how to spend the currencies.
In hindsight, this makes each unit a lot more valuable than it seems, because if it is lost, it is lost together with whatever money that it has. This also complicates the deployment of units, because if the player is pursuing a specific upgrade for a unit, that unit has to participate in enough battles to earn the money for it.
This limitation does solve a work-around that has been in games with retainable units as a gameplay feature. Unscrupulous players would not be having units on the backbench, waiting for the primary bread-earners to get the money for upgrades that would power up their colleagues.
To help the player in planning for their upgrades, icons show up next to the unit’s portrait whenever it has been paid enough to afford upgrades.
UPGRADES:
In between battles, the player has units spending the gold that they have earned (or rather, whatever that the player has given to them). The cheapest upgrades still require a considerable amount of gold, possibly all the earnings from the previous battle. Therefore, the player has to decide the expenditure carefully, lest the player has to use units that had been underpowered for the next battle.
As for the upgrade options, they are not many. Some of the options are straight upgrades to the statistical performance of the units. Some are for the special abilities that the units can have. The remaining options will only be available if the units have been given equipment.
EQUIPMENT:
In addition to gold and additional units, the islands may yield pieces of equipment when they are saved.
Any piece of equipment can be granted onto any unit, but it is permanently part of that unit’s assets and cannot be removed. It also cannot be replaced. Therefore, the player should decide carefully which unit should get which item. For example, giving a Bomb to an Archer unit is probably not a good idea, because the Bomb can only be tossed at close range and Archers should not be in close range to any enemies at all.
Unlike the abilities that units can learn, some of the abilities that pieces of equipment grant can only be used once. For example, Bombs can only be used once, unless they have been upgraded.
The abilities that pieces of equipment grant can be upgraded too, either to give them extra uses or to improve their potency.
ONLY EVER FOUR UNITS DEPLOYED:
Only four units can be deployed onto any island, including even the last one. Therefore, the player will have to have all of the proverbial eggs in one basket, or rather, four, and keep them alive until the last island.
The other units will have to sit out on the last island. If the player has to use them anyway, that would mean that the player has already failed. After all, if the strongest units could not defend the last island, it is unlikely that the others could.
ESCAPING:
If the player is an Ironman diehard, the player would want to have some means of preserving units instead of hitting the “close program” switch when the defence of an island has become untenable. The only way to do so is after the Vikings have landed, because the player’s units steal their boats to leave.
Of course, this is easier said than done. The player has to make sure that they do not attract the attention of the Vikings as they make their way to the boats.
FALLING & DROWNING:
Most melee combatants are powerful enough to force enemies back with their attacks. The Viking Brutes are particularly good at this.
It is possible for an individual to get knocked off a ledge or cliff into a lower elevation. They take damage from the fall, with any falls higher than two levels of elevation being fatal for most.
An individual may also be knocked back into water. Incidentally, no one in BAD NORTH’s world can swim – they just drown. Thus, it is possible to beat the Vikings by being there when they land, just so that they can be knocked into the water. Their boats are solid objects with collision boxes though, so they could merely be knocked back onto their boats.
KNOCKDOWN:
If an individual has taken enough damage in a short time, the next hit would knock it down. Any hits that it takes when it is down inflicts more damage, possibly killing it outright.
Most regular-sized individuals take a short while to get back up, but the Viking Brutes take longer. Indeed, if the player could spare an Infantry unit, the player could have them sweep in after Pikemen have knocked them down to save several seconds that the Pikemen would have spent to continue poking them.
VIKINGS:
As mentioned already, the Vikings arrive via boats, and after landing, most of them will go after the houses. However, they will go after the Saxons if they happen to be in the way. Indeed, it is possible for the player to lure Vikings over to other units, though disengaging is not easy, no thanks to the Saxons being rather thirsty for battle too.
There are several types of Vikings, but all of them arrive in boats, and will do little else but wait until their boats land, with the exception of the ranged ones. Some of them can be neutralized right where they land, e.g. having Pikemen wait for them and push them off into the water as soon as they disembark.
There is no direct reward for killing the Vikings, but the player must slay all of them in order to save an island. Other than pushing them off cliffs or into water, there is no means of killing them that does not involve direct attacks from the player’s own units. Therefore, the player will have to consider the damage trade that his/her units would have with the Vikings.
It would not take long for shrewd players to realize that pre-positioning of Pikemen is necessary in order to check the advance of melee Vikings and eventually eliminate them. Infantry are necessary in order to counter ranged Vikings, and the Viking that throws axes at the nearest unit before they assume the behaviour of regular Viking infantry.
SET COMPOSITION BUT RANDOMIZED LANDINGS:
When the islands are procedurally generated for a playthrough, the waves of Vikings that will attack them also have their composition determined; the information on this is not disclosed to the player, but would be noticeable to anyone who save-scum. However, the Viking waves come in randomized distribution, which still result in some vagaries of luck.
For example, the player may face a succession of ranged Vikings, which will wear down any Infantry units that the player has.
VICIOUS VIKINGS:
Throughout the course of a playthrough, the player would encounter most of the Viking unit types. The exception is a particularly vicious type that is only encountered in the last few islands. Unlike the others, these Vikings are predisposed towards seeking out the player’s units, and do not seem to bother torching houses. It is possible for the player to exploit this by having units replenish in houses, assuming that the player has time before the other Vikings arrive.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
The most notable characteristics of the parent cultures of the units are the shapes of their shields and helmets. For example, the Vikings wield their iconic round shields and their parabolic helmets with nose guards. (These are the authenticated version of their headwear by the way, and not the comical horned ones that poorly-researched fiction often portray.)
Otherwise, the units appear to be composed of individuals with vaguely humanoid shapes, not unlike the ones that seem to be much loved by European game developers, especially the Nordic ones. They are also all sprites.
There are few textures to be seen. Everything is flatly coloured, with the exception of the flames that the Vikings bring. Colour variation is implemented through the segmentation of sprites or the multiple polygons of 3D models.
When individuals die, they become decals on the island’s tiles. There is also copious amounts of blood, which is an amusing surprise considering how otherwise kid-friendly the game looks.
The most noticeable effort in the graphical designs is in the weather. As the player progresses through the islands, storms build up and die down. The storm has no effect on gameplay, however.
The portraits for the unit leaders are the only things that make a direct reference to the era of the setting. However, everything else has a typical indie game look.
SOUND DESIGNS:
The game uses a lot of percussion instruments for its music. This can be heard upon the pressing of buttons, and the commencing of battle.
The player will want to keep an ear open for the noises that are played when Viking boats appear from the mists. Each type of unit has a distinct sound clip that is associated with it.
There is not a lot of music to be heard in the game. The tracks with considerable length are only heard when the player wins or loses an island defence.
There are voice-overs, all of which are not legible and do not sound humanly normal. The player hears the unit leaders grunt and utter affirmative sounds when they are chosen for deployment, but not anymore afterwards – unless they are killed in action.
Individual Saxons and Vikings also make utterances when they die, though the Vikings have more variations due to their greater variety of units.
SUMMARY:
BAD NORTH is to be commended for having some different designs that make subtle contributions to the complexity of the game. Chief of these is the need to divvy money among units, instead of the simpler but all too common design of money counters. This design increases the value of any unit to the player’s efforts.
As for the actual gameplay, much of it is rudimentary positioning, with most of the complexity in the gameplay being the timing of the positioning. Otherwise, the gameplay is not much of anything genuinely new.
There are a few shortfalls in the gameplay. Considering that the player only gets a few unit types to work with, that archers are so ineffective can be disappointing.