Okay friends, you might not have known I was excited about this game, so now I’m going to tell you about it. In tttttttext formmmmm (cue wobbly/wavy noises and science-y sounds).
Viking Squad is a lane based brawler made by some awesome Canadiens up in Vancouver. The boys at Slick Entertainment Inc, and the musical mastery of Power Up Audio made a really fun game. You play as one of four viking characters (each with a color pallet that matches a certain group of turtles…) and smash and loot your way through all kinds of enemies and obstacles. As a sidescroller, it has hints of old school beat’em’ups like Battletoads, TMNT, and Double Dragon, but with a new twist on combat and speed.
The game is pretty fluid and fast for a lane-based brawler, so changing between lanes to attack multiple enemies or escape enemy attacks is key. Sometimes moving around helps expose the weak side of enemies for your buddies in-game to take down. Also elevation is sometimes important as some enemies may be on a higher or lower platform than you. Falling obstacles can stop forward motion while enemies creep up so keep an eye all around you and your friends. Co-operative gameplay exists both locally and online. You and two of your friends can join forces to steal all the gold and statues. Why only 3 players? Well here’s an interesting fact about Slick Entertainment Inc; They are a team of three people, so to be able to play test a game with more than three players would be difficult, so they made the game as a 3-player brawler. Clever, no?
As with most games these days, there are upgrades to make your character stronger (or weaker if you’re feeling daring), increase special abilities or character attributes. Perhaps you’d rather stronger special attacks to increased luck for loot-finding abilities. Maybe you want to flop the river entirely and lower your defenses just to see how far you can go without losing? With a variety of armor upgrades and weapon upgrades, you can hand-tailor the perfect balance of viking power to make your way through the game.
For me personally, I’d waited for this game a long time. I saw it at PAX multiple times, in multiple states. Don’t believe me? I even ended up in two of their time lapse videos checking out the game (see below). The blue hat has always been a great locator in PAX videos. 😀 Another fun thing is that Jesse the Drawbarian of Slick Ent also does livestreams. Creative ones and they’re always super fun to watch. You can check them on on their twitch or YouTube page for archives. It was fun to watch different aspects of the game come to life, and them see them fully realized once the game was on my PS4.
That said, this game is a lot of fun to play with friends, and the online quick-join mode means if you can’t find time to play with friends, theres always another viking out there ready for the plunder. I ended up lucking out with some friendly vikings who helped me beat the game and level up very quickly which was nice. The overall replayability of the game is medium to high, because once you become god tier powerful the enemies are relatively easy to beat, which is why there’s a secondary difficulty mode. It’s basically normal mode vs. death mode. This adds another layer to the game for those who want the added challenge, especially if you’re going to re-play with a different viking and you need to unlock all the things all over again.
It’s available on Steam and PS4, both with local and online multiplayer up to 3 players total. It’s a great value for a fun indie game. If you want more info, here are the links to check it out.
PlayStation Store | Steam | Slick Entertainment Website
-Written by Andrew(@SoAfterISaid)
