ASKA is the Viking survival game you never knew you craved. No longer will I wonder what managing unruly Vikings is like—now it’s my full-time occupation! This gem, brought to us by the development team at Sand Sailor Studio and Thunderful Publishing, has kept me on the grind for hours.

Your story begins with a tale: a tale of humanity loved by the gods, only to let your hubris make you think you are gods yourself. Turning on the gods made them cast you into the fire, destroying everyone and everything, leaving only a few to start again. Waking up on the beach after a shipwreck alone and defenceless, you take in your surroundings: a deserted beach, a vast forest, and an endless ocean, and oh yeah, a giant monster pointing at you from the water!

My first few hours learning ASKA were a rough go, starting off gathering wood and rocks; it felt like my typical survival game. Grab a rock, make a knife, break a tree, make an axe, and so on. No new ground was being broken. We danced this dance before I even felt like it, walking hand in hand as a 2026 Valheim in the early game, but boy, was I wrong.

The grind is real; everything takes excessive resources at each stage. Forget going out to search for everything it has to offer; you are in a time crunch. Food, water, and bad weather are all things you have to look out for. Building your first shelter and fire requires sticks, logs and bark. You chop a tree into a resource, then again into another just to carry it all back to build, which can take many trips, given the lack of inventory space.

Your job is to rebuild, using Joton blood (an ore you find around the land), and summon villagers. Each has its own capabilities, such as being a better hunter or gatherer, and so on. But what this does is free up your time to do more things and get out to see the land. Now, as good as an AI villager is, they are just A-B types; they do nothing more than the exact thing you tell them, food on the shelf, so they don’t starve to death because I’m not there to cook it for you.

Mixing this with managing tabs can be so overwhelming at the start, and just confusing; it felt like a stack of menus being dropped on me, but with trial and error, I came to better understand it all.
But it’s not all heavy; I found myself, after hours on my first seed world, starting over, taking with me the knowledge from the previous one. The second world was better! Everything just came together. I wasn’t wasting resources; I wasn’t starting the small 2-3 person settlement; it came alive as a thriving town, with villagers out chopping wood and collecting stone.

Building became a breeze: placing down the silhouette of a house and then walking away, the villagers got to work finishing it, and it was such a weight off the shoulders finally having it all come together. The freedom of building can truly bring out your creative side. Unfortunately, this is where we hit some limitations: terraforming during the building process. You are required to flatten the land to build rather than build into the slopes and rocks, which, in a game as stunning as this, can really hinder the aesthetic.

Now in this world, there are threats, wisps, wolves, and skeletons that all lurk in the dark. But honestly, the biggest threat is those damn smolkrs getting into my food (they are a rabbit-type creature). So defending yourself and your village is important.

A range of weapons for you are at your disposal, clubs and bows to start, and a stamina pool you have to manage that will keep you on your toes, a clunky dodge roll, and, of course, durability. The combat is fine, just… janky.

Visually, ASKA is stunning. Dark nights illuminated by Jotun rocks or moonlight start off your adventure, then by campfire as you progress. The vibrant colours on your character are quite pleasing to the eye. The game does a wonderful job of highlighting the transition from autumn tones to snowy fields as the seasons change. Honestly, I couldn’t fault the visuals. The audio from playing this game stuck with me; it felt like a Viking show.

From combat music to chill vibes as you build, the music was a gift to the ears, clear and direct from enemy sounds to smashing rocks. If you enjoy Viking-style music, ASKA did a really good job here. I have given a lot of praise to many aspects of this game, but it’s not without its flaws. Terrorforming is not new or groundbreaking, and I felt as if I only had half the options when using it.

A more manageable system for the villagers would be amazing because, as it stands, without clear direction at the start, on your very first villager, it can be quite overwhelming for a new player to have all these menus dumped on them; it’s part of the reason I had to start over with all the knowledge I just learned.

I really enjoyed my time in ASKA and will continue to adventure there. The development team is active, releasing regular updates/fixes, and I see much more potential in the future, so I would recommend checking it out.

Written by: Matiyus