Have you ever wondered what it would be like to lead your own Viking settlement? Viking Frontiers, developed by BLUM Entertainment and published by GameHunters (Gunsmith Simulator) & PlayWay S.A. (House Flipper series, Car Mechanic Simulator), gives you the chance to do exactly that, putting you at the forefront of leading your very own Viking village.

There isn’t much in the way of narrative. After being forced to flee your homeland due to a conflict with the Wolf Clan, your voyage comes to an abrupt end when a violent storm destroys your ship. You awaken on the shores of an unfamiliar land with nothing but the clothes on your back and a few other survivors. You are instructed by your Jarl to get your clan back on its feet. There is no voice acting, so you take what little story there is through some dialogue, which is just about skippable entirely. It’s not necessarily a bad thing if you’re into that, but if you want an immersive story, just know you’re not likely to get one here.

First and foremost, this is a survival game. You begin with nothing, gathering sticks and stones before crafting basic tools such as pickaxes, axes, hammers, and spears. Those tools allow you to chop down trees for wood, hunt wildlife for food, and gather the resources needed to survive. The logs you collect from trees can be used to build homes, and as you progress through the technology tree, you’ll unlock more advanced structures like sawmills and other production buildings that help your settlement.

Building is quite fun to do and feels almost therapeutic. It’s similar to the Forest games where you take each piece to the construction and watch it come together like a big piece of LEGO. Yet, it also felt like a chore at times, especially when some of the larger buildings needed you to practically strip the entire forest just to build a sawmill or farmhouse.

Thankfully, this is where your settlers come in; you may assign them to different roles. For example, placing a settler in a forge converts them to a blacksmith. This saves some time for you to focus on what you want to do, which will likely be the technology tree that I previously mentioned.

You start with the craftsman’s workshop, but the technology tree branches out into a number of things. Copper processing leads to bronze processing, which leads to iron processing, and so on. This is great, as you don’t have to stick with the same old stone shovel for five hours. Or go down the housing branch, which eventually leads to a great hall for your settlement. The tree has many things to chase, so you’ll never be bored with things to do.

Besides the technology tree, while playing ordinarily, you will level up passive skills, and there are dozens of them from trading, hunting and all the way to runecrafting. Levelling up these gives you better stats for what it is; levelling up in cooking gives you more nutrition and hydration.

Speaking of nutrition, hunting is vital to survival. You have to collect water and boil it over the fire so it’s safe to drink, and hunting animals for meat and their pelts is vital. The combat, however, felt slow and repetitive, which took me out of it a little. Animals are very skittish, and the combat is too one-dimensional to really approach it differently each time, which made it a chore.

Feeding your settlement becomes a significant issue also, as more settlers arrive, more food is eaten, so you have to remain on top of it; otherwise, their mood changes quite drastically, and they may decide to hop back on a ship and leave.

The menus were difficult to grasp at times and felt really clunky, and you moved across tabs, sometimes taking a bit of time to do the input. However, I wonder if that was just a personal issue cause after some time with it, it felt more natural.

Although the world initially feels quite small, it gradually opens up as you craft stronger tools capable of clearing obstacles, such as large rock formations that block access to new areas. Unfortunately, once those areas become accessible, there’s not a great deal waiting for you. The world feels surprisingly sparse, and beyond gathering resources, I rarely found much to see or do while exploring.

The sounds of birds chirping accompany you as you explore, but there is nothing in the way of a soundtrack, so it’s just you and this world when it comes to audio. The clanking of metal in a forge, the creaking of wood as the tree gets felled by the axe- every sound is solid.

Visually, Viking Frontiers feels a little outdated. Considering this is a smaller studio, I’m willing to give it a pass, and there are still moments that stand out in a positive way, to be honest. The water physics, for example, are surprisingly impressive, with rivers and streams flowing in a way that feels quite natural even if they aren’t graphically appealing.

I also ran into a handful of bugs during my time with the game. Every time I crafted an item at a workbench or interacted with the sawmill, my character would become stuck in place for a few seconds before I could move again. It happened often throughout my time with the game at various different stages, but I’m hopeful it’s something that may be fixed in an update.

Viking Frontiers introduces some promising ideas. While it succeeds in certain areas, it falls short in others. Building and expanding your village is genuinely satisfying, but sluggish controls, a sparse world, and several noticeable bugs too often get in the way of what could have been a much more enjoyable survival experience.

Written by: Dylan Kocins