Dead in Vinland

Review

Have you ever wondered how life would have been in the Vikings era? Would you have been one of their exceptional farmers? Maybe a brilliant boat-builder, a skilled blacksmith, a fearless warrior built like a bear with a beard long enough to tickle your knee caps, or simply the King of the clan? There are many stories that are emerging from this era and one of them is the unfortunate story of Eirik and his family.  One night, the entire population of Eirik’s village walked towards his modest habitat with the intent to destroy it and to kill him and his family. The only way for him to avoid entering Valhalla ahead of time is to steal a boat and leave their coastal village. After days of drifting, a humungous storm developed at sea and sent them right into the path of a mysterious island. It’s an incredible tale of survival that you have to relive in Dead in Vinland!

Dead in Vinland is a survival / management game with turned-base combat phases where you control a group of people who are stranded on a mysterious island and must survive.

After regrouping on the beach, your party will come across an abandoned camp which they will claim as theirs.  In this camp, they will find a shelter with two barrels of water, a workshop, a path to your shipwreck and a farming area, and all will have a specific icon at the bottom of the screen so you can swap from one place to another quickly and easily. What is very important to know is that if one of the main characters dies, it will be the end of the game. You must make sure they are all well fed (with fruit and cooked meals), that they keep sickness at bay (careful that they don’t eat raw meat or drink too much beer), and heal injuries as quickly as possible (gained mostly during fights, but other events might end in injury as well). Depression is a big problem and will increase depending on many things; keeping your party well rested is a must.  They also have a combination of innate and acquired skills. These skills are ranked from 0 to 100. For example, courage comes under the mental skills and might have the number 50 attributed to it, but if your character has a lack of sleep and he /she also depressed it will lower the effectiveness of this particular skill very quickly. All your characters have traits that indicate their abilities in certain tasks.  You can choose a new trait for people each time they level up.   

Conversations between characters begin as soon as your party regroups at the beach. Most of the conversations are set, but every now and then you’ll be presented with alternative answers or questions, and depending on your choice it will affect the relationship between the two interlocutors, increasing or decreasing the strength of their relationship; possibly amplifying their state of depression, for example. Depending on the events, some conversations will take place during the day, but mostly they occur at night in front of the fire.

You can select your character to do specific tasks, such as building an important station at the workshop, scavenging for water and resources, or exploring the island. This is the time to check your characters’ skill set to make sure they have what it takes to finish their specific task in one turn. If you decide to send one of them to explore the island, he/she might be able to discover a new area (there are 150 in total). In these areas they can find resources, camps, ponds (not with frogs, unfortunately), forests, graves, new characters and many other things. Here you have to choose who is more suited to specific actions based on their skills and traits; who is the best person to talk to people, or who has the courage to put their hands in a nest of exotic spiders, for example? You can invite people to join your party, but make sure you have enough space in your shelter.  Most of the areas will be full of goodies, including rune stones. These runes are extremely important to your party’s survival as they provide an opportunity to upgrade stations to their next tier. Sometimes your explorer will encounter enemies and a fight will arise before you can access the area.

You can only select a maximum of three people in those fights. It is pretty much a turn-based setup. Your characters each have a certain number of points for executing an attack, a defence or a taunt. When all of them are used, another character will have his/her turn, but it won’t necessarily be a member of your group. If you defeat your enemies, you’ll want to pick up their items, which can be very important for the well-being of your settlement. The downside is that your members will probably get injured and might bleed to death. That’s what happened in my first attempt (it’s not my fault if I faint when I see blood)!

After that it will be night time, when you have to rehydrate and feed your group in order to see another day! After a chitchat, the next day will bring new challenges, such as varying weather conditions and other random events.

I should also point out that with every new game you initiate, the events that occur on each tile may be different to your previous game, which gives more re-playability.

The artwork is good and the interface is easy to use. I strongly suggest playing on the easy mode if this is the first time you’ve played this genre of game. I do think that the dialogues could have been much better; they’re a bit wishy washy sometimes.