Valhalla Hills (PC) Preview

If there's one thing that Odin hates more than peace-loving humans, it's probably peace-loving gods. Case in point: his hippy-son Leko who, instead of being a war-hungry tower of muscle with a Natalie Portman fetish, enjoys creating buildings. The Allfather, being the strict papa that he is, banishes him to a nice, Unreal 4 Engine-powered earth, locks the door, and throws away the key, denying entrance to humankind, as well. Thankfully, Leko is as stubborn as his father, and will stop at nothing to return to Asgard, and convince Odin to let those poor bloodthirsty Norsemen enter Valhalla.

Each level is a small island, and each island has a portal. The purpose? Reach the portal, open it, fight - or calm - any nasties that might enter the mortal plane from it, move on to the next island, and repeat the whole thing all over in a slightly more challenging area. How will that be done? By constructing, gathering, and expanding. Despite the unique concept, however, Valhalla Hills is nothing more than just another simple real-time strategy, since it doesn't have something that makes it stand out amongst the competition. Then again, the only thing that matters is how fun everything is - is it, though?

While the main tool of the trade in this RTS is the good ol' mouse, don't try commanding the Vikings with it, because they are too self-important to accept that. Luckily, they can take care of themselves, meaning that when hungry they hunt and fish, when in need of a tool they produce it, and, generally whenever something needs to be done they auto-assign their Scandinavian behinds to do the deed. The only thing that can be done here is marking the spot where something will be built on, since construction is, once again, up to the Vikings. Note that, while there will initially be plenty of room for error, things will get tougher as the Vikings move on to subsequent islands, getting various Unlocks in the process, which are basically features that will be implemented in the next stage, and that range from helpful buildings and tools, to animals that don't exactly behave as sitting ducks.

Planning what to create and where is just one job, and yet it's the most important one. Things that must be taken into account? The distance from the desired resource that needs to be gathered, the availability of resources needed for a task, the balance between structures for sleeping, food producing, and resource gathering, amongst others. One thing must be made clear, though: this is not a tough game; it's casual. It's so casual that it would fit much better in a handheld device instead of a PC. Take the challenge of portals, for instance. At first, portal guardians go down pretty easy, or need fewer offerings placed on altars in order to forget about fighting. Later on, however, they become much harder to kill or calm. Unfortunately, things never really become hard enough to please the majority of strategy fans - it just takes more time to build a better town, enlist soldiers, and so on.

Besides its extremely casual nature, though, what else is wrong here? While basic mechanics are adequately explained through some brief tutorials, the more important ones aren't, meaning those in control either feel stupid or assume that the Viking's AI is problematic, when in reality it's not. Why are some unemployed when there are three incomplete buildings right next to them? Why don't they use the stored resources? Why doesn't this structure produce what it is supposed to? All these, and even more, will baffle newcomers, and force them to either do a bit of boring online research, or lots of tedious in-game experimentation.

Things can also get repetitive pretty soon. While each stage is randomly generated, it's possible to play 100 in a row, and nothing will really feel different. It's build-expand-fight-guardians again and again, with a slightly more challenging terrain, or a higher number of foes. What takes the biscuit, though, is the gameplay's extremely passive nature. At its current Early Access state, it feels as if the game plays itself, offering a very small amount of player interaction. Remember Tropico? It was pretty similar in terms of NPC automation, yet it offered multiple ways for affecting their behaviour, like increasing taxes, police stations, or… cathouses, to reducing tourism, pollution, or schools. Should Valhalla Hills be as complex? No, but some additional buttons, levers, and "pull-able" strings would be more than welcome.