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The Viking village is celebrating the return of the men from a heroic campaign. Fireworks light up the sky as the men tell of their brave deeds and of the foreign lands they have visited, it is a time of great rejoicing! However, this will change when the morning comes, as in the darkness of the night an insidious shadow envelops the village.
You play as both Helga the druid and the warrior Brunhilda, and after hearing the exploits of the Viking men you yearn for an adventure of your own. However, the next morning it seems that the men are nowhere to be seen; are they hiding to get out of helping the women clean up after last night’s festivities, or is it something much more sinister? You wanted an adventure, and now it seems like you’ve got your wish. Head off in search of what’s happened to the men of your village.
Your adventure starts on episode one, which isn’t much of an adventure but just cleaning up the village. In each episode you’ll have to complete certain goals in order to move on to the next episode. In episode one you’ll need to gather the dishes, acquire water for washing the dishes and finally wash the dishes. This doesn’t quite match up to the exploits of the men, but the place needs cleaning and you can always give the men a good rollicking later for leaving all the cleaning up to you when you find them.
At the start of each new level you’ll have some chat to read between various characters, each time adding a bit more to the story. You can skip this information if you so wish to and get straight in to the game. Every level is a maze of pathways, leading to various places and with obstacles in your way. Some obstacles consist of resources which you can collect like food, wood, iron, gems and gold. Other obstacles like broken bridges, ladders, puddles, prisoners, thorny tangle etc will need resources to rebuild or move them out of your way.
You collect resources by selecting the resource on the path and then it will be collected and taken back to your home base. You can only collect the resource which you come to first; any resource behind another cannot be collected until the one in front is removed. Sometimes this may take two or three visits, depending on the resource.
Some obstacles, such as broken bridges, you can repair with wood or iron; you click on the bridge or any other obstacle and it will reveal the amount of resources it needs to repair. Once you have enough wood or iron to fix the bridge you just select it and then it will get fixed, allowing you to move in to new areas of the level. Other obstacles, such as a Large Pile of Iron, will require Four Food before you’re able to collect Three Iron and you can yield the iron a few times before it’s gone.
Around the level there are various places you can build upon which will bring in more resources for you, like the farm, gem mine, vein of gold or forge. Once built they’ll start dropping lovely resources for you to collect; you must select them and have them brought back home to add them to your storage. You can only carry so much back to base but leaving it too long before you collect them can halt production, which will happen if there’s ten waiting to be collected. Collecting them each time one drops is probably not the best solution either as you’ll be wasting precious time going back ‘n forth, so you need to find the sweet spot in collecting them.
Trees and bushes can also be planted at various places if you have the required resources to create them, and once you have them you can collect the wood and food from them. They can only be harvested a few times, but they can be replanted again. You can also upgrade your home, which will give you more workers to help repair and collect everything you need. Upgrading the buildings will increase the amount of resources they’ll give to you. There are also some chests here and there which can yield some resources and will replenish after a short time; sometimes a key will be required to open a chest.
As you progress through the game, you’ll have different things to overcome, like monsters which can roam around the level, pillars which need to be unlocked by runes in a certain way, all while collecting resources. To help you along you can activate boosters, like extra running speed or extra resources. These can be found in the bottom centre of the screen, where a bar will fill and once it reaches a booster then you can take advantage of it.
In total there are fifty-two levels to complete over several different regions. Scattered around some levels are hidden jig-saw pieces which you can collect by simply clicking on them. Finding them all throughout the game will reveal a picture which can be viewed on the level select screen. Also dotted on the level screen you’ll notice some taverns with a jig-saw piece besides it. This is a mini game which can be played after completing the necessary level shown on that tavern.
In the options you’ll find Sound FX and Music volume sliders, System Cursor (use windows cursor or the games shiny gold one), Full Screen Mode and Show Hints. On the level select screen there’s Modes, Puzzle, Awards and Menu. In Modes you have the choice of three game modes: Casual (no time limits), Normal (moderate time limits, more challenging) or Expert (shorter time limits than normal). Puzzle is a jig-saw puzzle and when you find one on a level it will be removed from here to reveal a picture underneath. Awards are achievements earned in-game (sadly no Steam achievements) and Menu will take you back to the menu screen.
Positives
+ Fun to play for all ages
+ Good storyline
+ Cheerful music
+ Nice graphics
Negatives
- No steam achievements
- No cards
Take Helga and Brunhilda on their adventure as they try to rescue their men from the evil sorceress.
7/10
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