Norsin' Around

- Sam Greer

Do not let the adorable isometric sprite artwork, endearing character portraits, and cute sound effects trick you into feeling safe. Bad North is not a lovely new friend. It’s here to rob you of your time, beat you up, and possibly even burn your house down. Certainly I wanted to burn everything down in a fiery fit of rage after I lost all my hard-earned progress to a silly mistake for the third time.

It’s a simple strategy game, almost closer to being a puzzler. You have to defend a little island, or more specifically the cottages dotted around it. You have up to four units to hold off waves of Viking invaders. Bad North is about shuffling units around to make sure someone is on the beach ready to greet approaching enemies. Complications arise with more frequent waves and various enemy types requiring different units to counter. The key to each battle is teasing out the choke points on the islands—placing your troops where they can make the most difference without wasting time marching them from one end of the island to the other.