If you are a person who loves micro-managing with little engagement; and narrative to go on then Dead in Vinland is probably the game for you. Now the game starts with a bit of narrative; the protagonist and the family are running for their lives from an army of sorts to what end I don’t know simply because I’ve only gotten about two weeks into the game and I am hoping more exposition will come to explain what has happened because all I know so far is the protagonist thinks he did something, one person considered a witch and no you may not burn her and the rest of the starting group is his badass Viking wife and daughter. So your family steals a boat and barely any supplies and set out to sea with no one pursuing you, however, things go awry and after a short bit of exposition you are shipwrecked and land on the shore and the game starts; you can even get a tutorial if you need one!
We got this game from our curator page on steam and I do have to say, in terms of game-play it does provide a very solid experience the only real negative thing I can say about the game is
for tracking resources, there is never a gauge for how much water would be good for each person at the end of the night by the campfire.
However the game does track a variety of issues that arise and you as the player controlling everyone’s actions have to decide the best course of action to prevent them from committing suicide, starving to death, getting sick, injured, and the variety of ways to die keeps increasing. One of the things I enjoyed the most about the game is the ability to bring more people into your camp, and expand and grow as you explore the area you landed at.
Speaking of where you land, the game has several difficulties for newcomers and also for players who are more experienced at resource management; being the pansy that I am I took the less strenuous route of being stranded on a tropical island with my enemy named Bjørn (it means Bear in Norwegian.) So on my island, I was allotted a lot more resources than I would normally encounter in a desert as I struggle for survival.
In terms of actual gameplay its very linear where you instruct your characters to either explore, gather, craft, and so on so you can make it through the day and get stronger I kept my protagonist the father figure chopping wood primarily to build his constitution up to get ready to settle the score with Bjorn and his men as his daughter continued to explore the island. Among the way, I did encounter a few other characters and recruited several to my party but as resources got more scarce I tried to cut back on using certain characters due to a lack of food to feed everyone.
But this resource management game is interesting in the regards that it has a side-scrolling combat system as well; so as you explore the territory you will encounter bandits and other groups where you will have to fight to survive, killing them helps yield more resources but you run the risk of injuring your characters which can ultimately cause them to die if their health gets too low.
If you need a time kill; this honestly is a great time kill because the more you play the more you want to continue to find out what’s going to happen on the next day, after the next day and it does auto-save so you begin to worry about resetting to a point where everyone didn’t die.
It’s challenging even at its lowest setting; but not so much as to the point where you’d hate the game. Despite not really having a thing for resource management games, I genuinely found myself having fun with the little narrative I got as I kept playing, and the gameplay itself. The game was quite enjoyable and as a person who loves strategy, I found myself planning, and thinking carefully as to how I can make sure they are going to live another day.
If you are a fan of resource management games; I honestly recommend Dead in Vinland its fun, enticing, and definitely has something for people who are just interested in trying something new at an affordable price.
The game is visually amazing, the visuals for the game are fantastic and I absolutely love the detail they put into designing all their characters I normally chastise people on the visuals of the game because I want something that fits and feels perfect for it, and they succeeded with that in Dead in Vinland!
An autistic gamer with opinions on games who also enjoys making dumb videos on the internet!