AstroViking

Review

It has been written in many historical books that Vikings needed to die a glorious death (in combat) in order to reach the majestic hall of Valhalla located in Asgard, the world of Gods. Well, there is one little thing we haven’t been told about . . . before reaching Valhalla, the spirit of the dead Vikings rose into the sky, through the stratosphere, and found themselves stuck deep in space! That’s right. But that’s not all. The poor buggers had to fight against wave after wave of strange enemies, for as long as they could. You don’t believe me? Check out AstroViking!

AstroViking is a top-down arcade shooter, developed and published by Artii Games LLC, where you control a Viking warrior who has to combat hordes of enemies for as long as possible.

The game has two modes of play, which are Classic and Ragnarok.  However, you must defeat at least 25 waves in the Classic mode to successfully unlock the Ragnarok mode.

As you launch your first game, your Viking warrior will appear in the middle of the screen next to a blue rock. All you have to do is to click on the rock to activate each of the waves. Before doing so, you’ll notice four other larger rocks. These rocks are pretty important, as you can hide behind them during each wave to avoid being hit by enemies’ projectiles.  While this is all well and good, the flip side is that if you are behind them, you won’t be able to shoot at your enemies!

As you start a wave, four red holes will appear on the top, bottom, and both sides of the screen, from which enemies will surface randomly and the round will begin. Your Warrior will be equipped with magical powers on both of her hands; one hand will throw projectiles and the other hand will activate a vortex magical power. As you trigger it, all enemies will be pulled towards its centre for a few seconds, giving you the ability to shoot at them in one spot. The other ability that your warrior has is dashing. You can inflict damage to enemies when you dash through them, and most importantly, your character will be invisible for a few seconds.  However, it will take several seconds for both the dashing and vortex to regenerate themselves before you can re-use them.

As you hit and destroy enemies, you’ll earn points which you can use at the end of each wave by either buying back your health, or by spending them on the powerups and abilities tree for your dashing, firepower and vortex abilities.

In terms of the enemies, there really are a few of them. What makes the game interesting is that each of the enemies has a different pattern in terms of shooting projectiles, and it will become hectic from the 10 waves onwards. The other point I like is that you have a boss fight (a larger combination of enemies) every 5 waves.

Graphically, the game looks good.  At this point in time, there is no control support, which is a bit of a letdown. The other thing I would like to mention is that it would be good to change the background every now and then - just to refresh it, in my opinion.