Bad North review
My Nintendo Switch has become a haven for indie titles. After 8 months, the console’s novelty, portability, and overall convenience still make it my gaming go-to. And after purchasing Bad North, I don’t see that changing any time soon…since I’ve been staying up until 2 a.m. or later each night.
Bad North is a new-ish take on the real-time strategy genre. Developed by a three-man team called Plausible Concept, the game takes an extremely minimalist approach. It looks like a mobile game, and offers an addictive replayability loop that any other game would envy.
The game trades handcrafted depth for random variety; I found freedom in this, almost like the game encouraged me to study each island and craft battle plans unique to my situation. And after each defeat I found myself asking, “Okay, what can I do better this time?” as I started my next playthrough.
Folk hero
As far as motivation goes, the game doesn’t provide a clear narrative. Viking raiders have killed the king, and the remaining leaders try to escape; that means moving from one island to the next and gathering resources on the way. But even with that idea, there’s no compelling story or explanation of the heroes and villains. Each session is simply the story of a group of warriors trying to outlast an invading horde and escape the doom that follows them. (And after several dozen islands, that journey culminates in the Last Stand against the seemingly-endless viking horde.)
Commanders pick one of three classes, carry one artifact, and learn one special ability, which in turn affects how you can manage an encounter. These battles devolve into tactical chess matches that rely on using the randomly generated environments: hold a choke point with pikemen, or place arches on the high ground, or form a shield wall to buy time for reinforcements to cross the island.
It only takes five minutes for the campaign to become an odyssey for the characters. The collection of islands is simulated at the start of each playthrough, and characters are tasked with fighting off vikings and protecting local villages at each location. Any structures left standing at the end of an encounter provide coins which are then used to purchase character upgrades. (These can be key to survival in the more challenging stages.)
In a nutshell
Bad North isn’t just a minimalist RTS—it’s an addicting strategy experience that rewards careful planning. The developers stripped away the layers of complexity without losing the magic of the genre. Failures become learning experiences, defeats never feel unfair, and every tactic can work in multiple scenarios. These are concepts you see in big PC strategy games, and Bad North’s crowning achievement is its ability to build them onto such a simple (and almost mobile game-esque) framework.
I am really high on Bad North right now and would recommend it to fans of Mini Metro or FTL.
Pros
+ Visual design
+ Rewarding combat
+ Replayable content
Cons
- N/A