Blue's Reviews - Valhalla Hills Early Access added 9/18

Valhalla Hills
Developed by Funatics Software
Published by Daedalic Entertainment
Currently Early Access (beginning Aug 24)
Price on Steam: $19.99



Welcome to Valhalla Hills, a cute little strategy/simulation game that's currently in early access. This is an interesting take on the building theme. You are Leko, God of building, banished by Odin for... not being Viking enough? Your goal is to help your little tribe of Vikings earn enough "Honor" to make their way back into Odin's good graces by completing building scenarios. Your beginning map is basic, and there aren't many things you can build - as you go through more portals and complete more tasks, more buildings unlock, and more difficult challenges arise.



Right from the start, it's obvious that this game is pretty. The graphics look quite polished, and the objects and characters (that I've seen so far) fit very well with the graphical style. Everything appears to run smoothly on my system. The lighting is done very well, in particular. There is a day/night cycle, complete with sunrise and sunset, and your little buildings will have torches lit at night. That means that even when you're waiting for things to hurry up and get built, it's almost always interesting to just watch.

There are some limitations as far as aesthetics go, however. You have control over where things are built - mostly - buildings can only be placed in certain areas, depending on size and the type of terrain (sometimes I found the limitations a little confusing, and couldn't tell why areas were greyed out, but maybe they'll clear this up with a future update, or maybe it's part of the challenge. It's not a big issue). Sometimes, the buildings end up at a weird angle, so path building is a little awkward. You can customize your vikings on the main menu, but so far, it seems that the only things you can change about each Viking is their name, and their helmet - several different helmets are unlocked as the game goes on. I'm not too worried about these things, because visual customization isn't the focus of this game. Unlike many city builders, this game isn't about building huge and making each map your own. It's about dealing with the challenges of each procedurally-generated map, getting the necessary resources and tools to complete the map, and moving on to the next - all the while, gathering honor for your Vikings.



Let me take a moment here to discuss what I mean when I say "your" Vikings. This game works based on indirect control, which means that you, as the God of building, tell them what to build, and they do it. You don't tell them specifically what to do, it's all automatic. This can be a little weird until you get used to it, since there's currently no way to set priority for one building type over another. I made this mistake once (and only once). When you begin a game, your little Vikings spawn by a shiny little stone. It's on the right side of the island in the photo below, with the blue shape on it. There are some resources around it at first, which you must use wisely... do not do what I did, and build a bunch of things right away, and then discover that I had used the wood up, and had no woodcutter's hut, and therefore no way of getting more wood, and had to start the level over again. You can, if you want to, do pre-planning by laying down the foundations for buildings, clicking on them, and clicking "disable." This is usually for buildings that you don't need, for example, if you have a surplus, or your quarry has run out of stone, but it can also be used to stop the building process until you decide you can spare the manpower/resources. Learning little tricks like this will allow you to gain a little bit more control over your little people. They will still eat, sleep, and socialize without your say-so, however.



I've found this game to be very immersive and enjoyable so far. There are a lot of different aspects to each challenge to consider, for example, your Vikings need enough food, and most of the gatherable resources are limited, which (at least before sustainable food sources are available) puts a bit of a time constraint on finishing each map. I thought I would hate that at first, since I'm usually a very meticulous, slow planner, but so far, I haven't felt too much pressure. On the contrary, knowing that resources are finite gives me extra motivation to keep moving forward to the next fresh challenge. Since I am a lingerer, and I do get pretty obsessive about details (and kick myself for making mistakes,) having a fresh start and a brand new challenge works very well for me. I don't have to worry so much about "messing up," because I can just begin again on the next map and (cough) pretend it never happened. (Don't look too closely at the layout of any of my maps, I really haven't gotten the hang of it yet. Ahem.)



There are a few things I still haven't figured out, which may or may not be bugs. For example, in the photo above, you can see from the notifications along the top of the screen that I have a "missing resource" - sticks. Yet on my resource map on the right hand side, you can see that I've got 15 sticks in storage total, with five of them being in the  military storage area specifically. Why the Vikings won't wander over and get the sticks, I don't know. (I've learned that moving the military camp around is required to get them most of their supplies, since they tend to stick near the camp, but it's a little silly just how close you sometimes need to move the camp to the resource. I feel as though couriers and storage areas should be able to help with this, but they don't seem to, at least not by a lot.) As a result, you sometimes wait around for a very long time for something to get built, because the Vikings simply don't realize that the resource is available.

I'm pretty sure this will get tweaked. The patch notes thus far cover a lot of issues that I had noticed since I first purchased the game (which must have been very close to its release. I couldn't resist). And another note about the patch notes - a lot of the time, I have seen patch notes that include tiny bug fixes that I've never even heard of, which gloss over larger bugs that have been reported by the community. Not so here. Everything I've seen indicates that the developer is working very hard to make this game run as well and as intuitively as possible. Nothing that I've seen so far that's "wrong" is impossible to get used to.



Now, let's take a look at combat. To end each level, you either make "sacrifices" at an altar, or open the portal (the big blue shiny thing,) through which will come some monsters, which get stronger and more numerous the higher you go. Once they step into the area your military camp is in, your soldiers will attack the invaders, and the result looks something like this. The red folks are your Vikings, the blue are the bad guys. As you can clearly tell, even from this still photo, there isn't a whole lot here as far as combat animations. You basically see HP disappearing from each participant in the combat (there does seem to be some sort of targeting system, because the whole group doesn't take damage, so it would appear that the monster is targeting one individual. How this is done, I don't know). When each enemy dies, your Vikings get a little bit of honor for participating in the glorious battle.



After a few levels, more wild animals unlock, some of which are hostile, and you'll find that some of the maps already have enemies present. This can present a challenge, especially before your Vikings are able to make anything besides a basic axe - and when your resources are limited enough that you can't have very many soldiers. Some types of animals do a pretty hefty amount of damage, and while civilian Vikings will run away if their health is really low, military Vikings will fight to the death - and the result of this is that on some maps, if your Vikings wander off in search of food and run into a bear, well, you can lose some of them pretty quickly. Better weapon types and materials needed to make them unlock as you go along, thereby increasing the strength of your Vikings.

However, the "honor" accumulation is quite slow overall, and I'm wondering whether it wouldn't have been wiser to go with some sort of leveling system that would allow you to feel some progress over time. You can see in the picture above, in the upper right hand corner, how the honor bar looks, and at that particular stage, even though Estrid has over ten thousand honor points - which, when accumulating at ten or twenty-five at a time, is a fair number - her bar looks depressingly low. It might make more sense to divide the honor accumulation into stages, with benefits for reaching certain milestones, just so you feel like you're making progress.



Let's talk about value and reception for a moment. This is an early access game which currently costs $20 on Steam. I am a little bit hesitant about the price tag, not because the game isn't good, but because it's early access, and it isn't nearly as involved as most of the other strategy/building games I've played - much though I've been enjoying it. The graphics are nice, and it's feels fairly finished for an early access game, and personally, I need a few games in my library that are not overwhelmingly complicated that I can relax with. So it's not necessarily a bad thing that the player control is what it is - when I'm really in the mood to play Valhalla Hills, it's because I don't feel like customizing every building, I don't have the patience to deal with complicated scenarios or things that have bigger consequences than you anticipate, and I don't want to have a million different things to consider before I can end my turn. And the atmosphere and ambiance are very relaxing. So I don't regret buying it. But my advice to the rest of you, unless this is really your sort of thing, is to wait until it's on sale, or wait to see what else is added to the game as it continues to be developed.

Here's why. The current Steam reviews are 84% positive, of 140 reviews. Most of the negative reviews that I scanned critique exactly what I've already brought up here - it's good, but it's fairly simple, and it could get repetitive after awhile. (I don't mind repetition, but I can see their point - plunk down woodcutter at the beginning of every level - and then proceed to do other things in a particular order for awhile, then do the same thing on the next map, having unlocked a few more buildings, etc - yeah, I can definitely see the issue.) I would see it as a good value if the game was already finished, but for early access, without much idea yet of how much the gameplay will change or just how much more complicated things will be by the end, and whether what's added will be enough to break up some of the monotony, I really couldn't say. Games tend to go up in price when they're "officially released," but they also tend to go on sale while still in early access, so I don't think it'd be too much of a gamble to see where this is headed before picking up a copy.

The end result is, I'm going to keep updating this review as I revisit it, and as more tweaks happen and more content is released. I think it will be fun and hopefully rewarding to follow the game's progress and development, and I'm looking forward to keeping you up to date. See you next time, and as always, if you have questions or I've missed anything, let me know!

bekkasan it doesn't take as much brain as Civ - but the levels are pretty quick in comparison, too. It'll be interesting to see what else they add as it is developed.

I do the same thing with my games - put them down, pick them up. Sometimes I play five or six games a day for 20 mins or less apiece xD The only games I play consistently are The Sims. I do enjoy having different games for different moods but they don't all get the play time they deserve. I've got a few more notes to add to some of these reviews. Should get on it.

Maybe I should use that for my TS2 Bordello family?

:::pokes around int Blue's gaming library:::: hmmmm.....do you have any of the King's Quest games? I played versions many, many years ago and noted steam has some new ones, kinda pricey right now for me though...until I get a job.

I know this is from June, but no Ark review? :-)