Are you looking for a relaxing game to play after a stressful day at work? Perhaps you need a different world to plunge yourself into, while laying back, opening a beer and listening to some awesome music? Well, look no further: Land of the Vikings is the game you've been looking for!

This Early Access title takes you to an almost empty piece of land where you can start building and growing your small village: starting from gathering fruits and herbs to farming the land and animal husbandry, to trading and raiding other lands!

Gameplay

You start in a tiny village with a handful of vikings. From there, you will immediately begin chopping trees and mining stone in order to build more houses and some necessary buildings, such as a gathering hut and a marketplace where people can buy and sell food.

There are objectives that both work as tutorials and incentives that give you some direction as to how to go about developing your village. These are a great help to get you on your feet and also introduce you to the different aspects of the game. Completing objectives will add Fame to your village. Fame points can be used in the Tree of Life to unlock new ways of living and other perks. Increasing the village population also contributes to your Fame.

As your village grows, your Vikings will have more and more jobs and activities to engage in. You can assign some Vikings to certain fixed jobs like carpenter, hunter, tailor or miner. Villagers without a specific job will busy themselves with other activities such as gathering stone and lumber, managing the farms or building new houses.

Things are constantly happening. Villagers will marry, have children, grow old and die. You will have to reassign jobs as vikings die and keep building new houses as children grow up and move out of their parent's homes. Sometimes survivors from raided villages arrive at your doorstep, asking for a place to stay. And of course, nothing beats the terror of watching your first building collapse in an earthquake or a thunderstorm!

Another entertaining feature of the game is the changing of the seasons. The summers are all fine and dandy, but winter is a rough time. Villagers need to prepare for the winter by filling up their grain stores and making warm clothes. Farming the land and gathering fruits are impossible during the winter, so villagers will need other ways of providing food in order to sustain themselves. Besides the realistic gameplay, the game graphics show some real beauty during the winter. The snow animation is gorgeous and accumulates slowly and steadily over a few days, which looks quite realistic.

Final Verdict

Land of the Vikings is a beautiful Early Access game with alluring graphics and music that touches the heart. The game is very well-developed for an Early Access title. It provides plenty of fun, and can be challenging and relaxing at the same time.

Pros:

• Realistic gameplay
• Intuitive controls
• Beautiful graphics
• Inspiring music

Cons:

• Still in Early Access phase (not bereft of bugs)

Rating: 9/10 ✅