The Viking Resurrection

Sons of Valhalla, developed by Pixel Chest and published by Hooded Horse, was released on April 5, 2024, and is initially available for Microsoft Windows.

It is an RPG game set in the Nordic era, featuring Thorald Olavson, a Viking who died and was given a second chance to avenge his destroyed village and rescue his beloved who was kidnapped, so Thorald will only be welcomed in Valhalla if he completes this final task in life.


 

Odin's Runes

The story of Sons of Valhalla, although simple, is very interesting, combined with the adopted graphic style and varied mechanics, but at the same time simple, make the whole package very interesting.

As I mentioned earlier, we play as Thorald and are given a second chance to live granted by Odin, during our journey, we find runes that provide attribute bonuses, however, if we die again, the condition for us to be able to be reborn is that we must choose one of the runes we possess to be discarded.

Thus, we start our adventure by building a small camp, with few soldiers and few defenses, and from there we progress, conquering new camps, improving our structures and our attributes that help us in combat.

The combat structures we have in the camps can vary according to their size, initially, we only have soldiers on foot and some archer towers, essential structures for defending your camp while you are away.

Sons of Valhalla has a resource system that is used to improve our camps, such as wood, fish, and plants, these resources can be obtained within our camp through fishermen and lumberjacks, for example, or through loot we acquire from enemy camps.

In addition, we have a health bar and an energy bar that we must manage, these bars can be restored using food for health and mead for energy, remembering that we obtain these items in our camps, where the supply posts are located.
 

Combat and Organization

The combat in Sons of Valhalla is definitely its key point, as I mentioned, we can recruit and train units to integrate into our army, these units accept commands such as advance, hold position, attack, form a shield wall, and so on.

During my experience, I made extensive use of these commands, but unfortunately, at times, it seems a bit confusing and the artificial intelligence does not respond as well as we would expect, but it is completely possible to carry out your tactics effectively and achieve your objectives without getting too frustrated.

It is worth noting that the game has a linear progression system, being a project done in pixel art, it does not have an open world and is limited to moving forward and backward.

There is also the possibility of fast travel between camps, which greatly facilitates movement and resource and unit management, since, as I mentioned earlier, we can be attacked at any time, so having a sense of movement and managing your runes, armies, and supplies well is essential for a smoother progression.

It is important to point out that the game relies exclusively on runes to enhance the strength of the character and their army, being the main mechanic both during the journey and in death, choosing which one to give up to continue our mission.

Of course, we also evolve our structures, a function that allows us to increase the number of troops being produced simultaneously and even stronger and more advanced units.

Sons of Valhalla is a project with a lot of personality, being a practically linear single-player game, it is well executed, with some flaws in artificial intelligence and a lot of repetition after a few hours of play, but it is mainly fun, with beautiful graphics and art.
 

A Satisfactory Package

The release of Sons of Valhalla is another game that has the ability to positively impact the indie game scene, the graphic quality and animations are truly impressive, everything gives a good sense of immersion, the dialogues, interactions with objects, and especially the combat.

The game, in general, is easy to play, the tutorial is extremely complete and teaches us everything we need to know to play with ease, although some mechanics may seem unresponsive, it is more a matter of getting used to it.

The game is localized in several languages, but only has English voice acting, which in no way hinders the understanding of the game, the quality of the dialogues is surprisingly good and the translations were very well done.

The game's audio is very good, the quality of the voice acting itself is great and combined with what I mentioned about the dialogue accuracy, it becomes very interesting, being mainly a key factor for immersion in Sons of Valhalla.
 

An Interesting Yet Limited Experience

My experience with Sons of Valhalla was good for the most part, the game's optimization is very good, as it is a very lightweight game, in addition to having good mechanics, good graphics, it has a very interesting story, but I leave a negative point for the repetitiveness, which becomes present after some time of play, and for the artificial intelligence that I mentioned earlier.

The game offers a good quality of life, with well-crafted menus, tutorials, relevant tips, and good localization tools to help understand the interface.
 

For this review, the game was experienced on PC, using the Steam platform. I thank Pixel Chest and Hooded Horse for providing the access key.