First Look – Valhalla Hills Preview

I have played many games, but not that many when it comes to strategy, I do however have Settlers and Civilization and I rather like them both, they both kept me glued to the screen for some time, however, as with all games, unless the game is captivating and enjoyable, I soon get bored.

Moving on to a new game from  Developer Funatics Software and publishing house Daedalic Entertainment, let us introduce Valhalla Hills a game with Vikings, and a god, sort of.

I am running the game on an MSI GS70 Laptop running a GTX970m, 16GB Ram and an Intel i7 CPU, and the game of coarse plays perfect, however as with all games the developer has released minimum and recommended system requirements.

System Requirements

Vahlalla Hills is currently an early access game on steam, and is gaining a lot of attention from gamer’s and press, so what has this game got that shouts come play me?

Banished from Valhalla you play as the useless, non combatant Leko ‘God of building’, son of Oden ‘A God’. You are tasked with one simple role, prove to your father you are worthy of returning to Valhalla by mastering randomly generated missions suited to your progress which make no bloody sense, how is the world randomly generated, maybe say ‘prove to your father you are worthy of returning to Valhalla by mastering the land and missions set forth’.

Your main goal is to lead your followers to the summit of a very large mountain where atop behold Valhalla, have to admit Vikings were dumb, but damn they were also very obese, almost like todays western people, except we’re *socially backwards and just eat loads of crap and don’t exercise (*minority) the Vikings were hard arse nuts, exercised a lot and communicated, there was no fast food, just the fast food they had to catch/hunt.

Everything in a randomly generated, so no world or starting grounds will be the same, which is great, nothing worse than rinse repeat same old shit over and over again. Even the good old Vikings are generally different in appearance, and to be able to change the name for each of them was great, which I did straight away, named them Pips, Finite, Blarr, Rabbid, Dai.. You get the drift, I did get to a point where I thought more about a name than actually playing the game.

The games, animated design is well received, with its bright and colourful level designs and animated characters. The game’s control system is easy to grasp thanks to its point and click system.

As the game is still in early access we would like to throw across some idea’s that could be implemented to make the game more fun, if the developers see them as good ideas.

For example, game tasks, seem limited to just one angle, open portal move on, how about adding tasks or objectives that need to be completed within each stage that has nothing to do with opening the portal, gives the players more things to do, instead of just one task. (Bonus tasks)

Also give more control over the Vikings, being able to pick them up and move them, to a destination you wish them to be.

Add more options to build mode, like design, colour even the way the buildings are positioned, 360 degrees, so instead of having each house, set in one position, you can have them set any way you wish.

Currently the FOV seems limited to 270 degrees, this needs to be fixed so we can have full 360 degree viewing angles.

I found there was no tutorial level within the game to teach you the basics, even though the basics are simple to pick up, not everyone is great at understanding and learning new concepts without a hand to show them the way. There was also a lack of PC customisation options within the graphics menu, which needs to be looked at, just to add the basic of options example ‘VSync’.

Even with all the idea’s that I wish to see added to the game, the game was still very fun, myself and my partners enjoyed playing the game for a few hours, without stopping, the game seems to have a lot going for it,I just hope and pray they deliver on a title that has such a lot going for it and not give us another GODUS flop.

There is something you can do, to help develop the game, allow the developers to see and understand how you play the game anonymously, the option is available within the early access version of the game.

Grab your copy of the game here and support the developers http://store.steampowered.com/app/351910/

Positives

• Art style and Animation
• Story
• Control system
• Easy to pick up and play

Negatives

• Game options (Graphic settings)
  
• Lack of tasks
• Lack of customisation

Some interesting notes taken from the early access page which seem relevant to this preview and for anyone interested in playing or help develop the game.

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“There are some things in the game that aren’t final yet and which will get a lot of attention until release. The most important points are in the following list. These are the points we want to put emphasis on in terms of player feedback:

BALANCING: A process during development that actually never ends. We will keep analysing the game’s numbers and optimize them. Does the lumberjack work efficiently enough? Are there too many fish? Are archers too weak? Stuff like that.

RETURN TO ASGARD: we want to make the return to Valhalla more meaningful for those Vikings who proved themselves worthy and add more rewards for the player.

RETURN TO ASGARD: we want to make the return to Valhalla more meaningful for those Vikings who proved themselves worthy and add more rewards for the player.

MOUNTAINS: We want the mountains to be even more challenging and give them some more “specials”

– We want the mountains to be even more challenging and give them some more “specials”

– We’re planning on implementing more mountain-types and come up with scenarios with more mountain-specific elements.

MILITARY:

– COMBAT SYSTEM: right now, we have a pretty simplistic combat system, but we want to extend and improve that

– FIGHTING ANIMATIONS: these are subject to improvement as well.

ENEMIES:

– We want to implement more diverse types of enemies, maybe even naval enemies.

– We consider letting enemies also attack player BUILDINGS. In that case, we’ll also implement special DEFENSIVE buildings.

UI AND FEEDBACK: here we want to vastly improve on usability and add more help and information, so players can master the challenges of a functioning settlement better.

MORE BUILDINGS: We are considering to add additional buildings with a wider range of interesting functions.

SUPPORTERS: We want to add the possibility to assign Supporters to production buildings. Those units will enhance a building’s productivity.

MISSION ENDING: Successfully completing a mission will be improved. We have different ideas and would be happy about players’ suggestions.

SACRIFICES: These are done automatically at the moment, as soon as enough resources are gathered. Players will have to care of this manually in the future.

TOOLS: At the moment, workers build their own tools. For that, they need resources which they also take care of autonomously. If they fail, the reasons for that are not as transparent for the player as we’d like. We consider implementing a craftsman who takes care of making tools and also upgraded versions of them.

BUILDING EXTENSIONS: We consider making extensions into regular buildings to simplify handling.

MUSIC and SOUND EFFECTS: we’ll keep working on that.

PERFORMANCE: subject to improvement

also check out the huge update recently release on Valhalla Hills http://invisioncommunity.co.uk/2015/10/07/new-content-and-trailer-for-valhalla-hills/