Game Reviews

Day of the Viking

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iOS
| Day of the Viking
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Day of the Viking
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iOS
| Day of the Viking

Day of the Viking takes the tower defence genre pretty literally. You're in control of a ragtag bunch of rock-throwers and archers, and you need to stop a horde of Vikings breaking into your holdfast and stealing the princess.

What ensues is a madcap, sometimes overwhelming game of swipe and tap as you hurl everything at your disposal in the vague direction of the Norse invaders.

There's a lot of fun to be had here, and a surprising amount of challenge as well, but you need to persevere with the game if you want to get the most out of it.

The early levels aren't quite as simple as you might like them to be, and there are a couple of difficulty spikes that give you a sharp jab before you've really got the hang of things.

Toss a pig

You've got two basic units at your beck and call. First there's archers. They fire at anything you tap on. You start with just a couple, but you can add more to your ranks with money you earn as you play.

Second you've got a slingshot. You fire this Angry Birds style, drawing back a finger then releasing to fling whatever is in the catapult at your onrushing foes.

Usually you'll fire rocks, but sometimes you'll get barrels that explode when they hit the ground, and pigs that stomp through the oncoming horde after they've plopped onto the ground.

A third unit type scurries out onto the field of battle to try and grab any coins that the Vikings drop. You tap to engage his services, but if a bad guy gets anywhere near him he'll drop whatever treasure he's carrying and scarper back to safety.

Fire a bow

Each of the assaults you need to withstand has three side missions that net you stars. You use these stars to unlock new levels and challenges.

Some of missions are as simple as killing three Vikings with the same rock, others are a little more complex and might require you to come back when your warriors are a further up their upgrade trees.

There's a chaotic nature to the play here that some people are going to find difficult to process. Letting your guard down for even a split second will likely lead to your base being overwhelmed. And in the first few levels, that's going to happen a lot.

But it's worth persevering with. Things can get punishing, but once you work out the speed the game demands to be played at things get a little easier. It's a question of whether you can be bothered to stick with things long enough to acclimatise.

Smash a hay cart

Day of the Viking is certainly fun, and the way it doles out new projectiles and changes terrain means each of the levels feels reasonably fresh.

If you can get past its strangely cruel beginnings, then there's a good chance you'll stick with it for a while.

It might not be the most original game in the world, but there's enough here to sate the sort of appetite that likes its tower defence games to be frantic, good-looking, and a little bit different.

Day of the Viking

Day of the Viking has a few too many sharp edges, but if you stick with it there's a pretty decent game here
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.