“Establish a Norse village and refine the land’s resources. Pay tribute to the King, or grow strong enough to fight back. A Viking colony sim with production chains and resource management.” – Steam Description

Fjordal is a Viking-themed indie colony sim that puts you in Norway in the year 955. You’re responsible for establishing a settlement, gathering resources, managing your villagers productivity, and making sure King Olaf Tryggvason gets what he demands. There is something incredibly satisfying about starting with nothing and slowly building a little settlement into something you can be proud of. Give me a handful of resources and a few villages, and I can lose an entire day without even noticing…

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Welcome to Norway!

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At its heart, Fjordal is a village-building and resource management game. You start small and gradually work your way towards establishing a thriving Norse settlement. You’ll need to construct building, assign your villagers to jobs, and create production chains to keep everything running smoothly. This is one of my favorite kinds of games, and I feel like Fjordal is a great addition to the genre. Of course, things aren’t quite as simple as building whatever you want when you feel like it. You have a King to answer to, and he won’t accept “we’re working on it” as an excuse. You’ll need to keep an eye on his demands while making sure your own needs are being met as well… until you’re ready to grow your own forces and fight back!

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A Viking’s Work is Never Done

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One of the things that makes Fjordal enjoyable is that there’s more to managing your settlement than simply collecting wood and stone until you can afford another building.

Your villagers need to be productive, resources need to be processed, and you’ll need to think ahead if you want to keep everything running smoothly. The production chains give you plenty to work toward, and there’s a satisfying sense of progression as your settlement becomes more established.

Foraging is another nice addition. You’ll come across resources and mushrooms that can provide temporary benefits to your workers. Different mushrooms offer different buffs, and figuring out how to make use of them adds another layer to managing your little community.

And then there’s the food. Keeping everyone fed is important, particularly when winter rolls around. It’s not enough to simply build a nice-looking village and hope everyone figures things out for themselves. Also, if you don’t have a surplus of food, your villagers can’t make babies and grow the population!

Between resource gathering, production, building, and keeping everyone supplied, there’s always something that needs attention.

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More Than Just a Viking

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If building a peaceful little Viking settlement isn’t keeping you busy enough, Fjordal also offers a separate Wave/Tower Defense mode. Here, the focus shifts from gathering resources and expanding your village to defending a stave church against waves of hostile invaders. In this mode, you actually get to control a hero character who fights alongside your defenses on the front lines. Your hero can be customized and developed, giving you a more active role in keeping those invaders from reaching their target. Of course, you’ll still need to do some resource gathering and build up your defenses

between waves.

There’s also a separate knowledge tree for this mode, allowing you to unlock improvements and develop your strategy as the challenges get tougher. I really like that this is a completely different way to experience Fjordal. The main game is all about carefully managing resources, establishing production chains, and growing your settlement, while Tower Defense gives you a chance to get a little more hands-on with the action. It’s a nice change of pace and adds another layer of replayability.

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• Graphics– I LOVE the choice of this game using a stylized voxel art style. The charming and simplified geometric structures combined with a vibrant color palette make for a very fun experience.
• Gameplay– I already loved this style of gameplay, and Fjordal does everything right in terms of gameplay. I found myself wanting to play just a little longer, and just a little longer, until the entire day disappeared. Overall, the gameplay is very solid!
• Sound– I love the calm music that plays in the background throughout the game, and appreciate the tone shift when the King’s men stop by.
• Controls– The controls are very simple, and pretty similar to other games like this one. Also – *finally* a colony sim that doesn’t have a bad camera angle!!
• Story– The story is easy enough to understand, and adds to the overall Viking theme.