Nordhold Review

Nordhold is a roguelite tower defence developed by StunForge and published in collaboration with HypeTrain Digital. It’s StunForge’s first game release, and it seems to be very well-received, so let’s check it out and see what it has to offer.

There isn’t much of a story from what I can tell. You are in charge of creating a nice and big Nordic village, and you must defend it from all manner of threats that want nothing more than to pillage it for everything it's worth. In Normal Mode, you’ll eventually reach a point where all these attacks end, leaving your village to thrive without worry. In Endless Mode, though, your village will fall eventually, with constantly escalating threats coming after you until something gives.

The game's visuals are nice, if nothing too special. Although, I think I recognise the character models and hexagonal tiles from other games like Run Pizza Run and Stolen Realm. While you won’t notice it most of the time (with the only notable section being the tutorial), I do want to make note of it. Store-bought assets aren’t a bad thing to have in a game, but it has to rely on gameplay for it to stand out from the others. At least the music is nice to listen to as you watch your defences either hold or fold.

But enough about that, let’s get into a run. At the start of every round, you’ll be in the Economy Phase, where you’ll assign workers, spend your resources on buying new buildings or upgrading the ones you already have, and set up your defences. There are tons of things to buy, but never enough resources (wood, stone, wheat, and gold) to purchase everything you want while keeping in mind the various future events. You might get banners that can buff your towers and village, gain a Hero who can allow you to cast spells and provide special bonuses, a chance to send workers out on missions for additional banners, or you’ll encounter a boss who will instantly kill you if you don’t stop them. It’s nice to know what to look forward to or watch out for; it makes planning easier.

From pelting the enemy with arrows and fireballs to disintegrating them with dark energy beams and arcing electricity, you’ll have quite a few options to help deal with the hordes. Setting up your towers to defend the village required more thought than I anticipated. It’s more than choosing the type and location, but you need to take into account the height bonus, the tile type, what resources are in range, and if it’s worth spending the resources. Your defences also have a surprisingly robust amount of options to perfect your strategy: you can tweak what they target, when and how they level up, and even make them completely automated with no input needed on your part. As the game goes on, it might be necessary to adjust these settings if you want to get everything right in a timely manner.

That being said, to generate more resources, you’ll need to move on to the next phase. Once you hit the Explore button at the end of the path, it’s time for the Defense Phase. The path to your gate will grow a little longer, maybe even branch out into separate paths, enemies will spawn, and your towers will do their best to kill everything. If the gate falls before the wave ends, it’s game over. You aren’t completely unable to do anything yourself, as once you obtain a randomly generated Hero, you can cast spells to assist in stopping the invaders and turn the tide, but are limited by the amount of energy you have. There’s no cooldown; once you’re out of energy, you need to wait until the next wave to cast more spells.

It’s a balancing act, where you want to do your best to improve your village and prepare for the future, but also ensure it’s well-protected in the present. Lean too heavily in one aspect, and you’ll find yourself seeing the game over screen. It’s hard to decide what to put your resources into, and that’s what makes it fun. Your decisions will either work out flawlessly or bite your face off, and I always want to try better on the next run. And this is all made easier by the existence of Honor points.

Honor is generated in a variety of ways, like killing elite enemies, and it’s used to unlock meta-upgrades to make future runs a little easier, such as giving you more resources at the start, increasing productivity, making your base towers stronger or unlocking new ones, or reducing costs of upgrades. What I found interesting is the fact that you can do this at any time. You don’t need to end your attempt to buy meta-upgrades, and they’ll take effect instantly. It’s neat and it makes every run a little better. You’ll eventually beat the game; it’s just a matter of how good you are at strategy and planning ahead.

While I loved the amount of thinking and planning present and the tough decisions I had to make in every attempt, not everything went smoothly. While the game ran at a nice and supple 60 FPS most of the way through, it did stutter on a few occasions for whatever reason, despite being able to run on a potato. I also found myself a little frustrated at times, such as with the tutorial. It does help you get to grips fast enough… but it’s also longer and harder than you’d think (ugh, there’s no helping it). It took me several runs in order to actually finish it, and there are still tons of core features to unlock after that.

As for the other gripes I had, I found that the economy system isn’t the best. The difficulty curve is nice, slowly ramping up enemy speed and health, but If you aren’t thinking multiple steps ahead when it comes to resources, you’re screwed long before the attempt ends in a stomp.  And some enemy types can end runs by themselves, and unless you’re zoomed in close, you can’t really tell who exactly they are.

But that’s everything I have to say about Nordhold, and I’d like to recommend it to anyone willing to try it out. It has complex yet easy-to-grasp gameplay and design, with enough depth to keep you coming back for more to see if you can do better this time. When everything clicks, it feels great to just sit back and watch as you conquer your foes. And there’s still more to come to this game.

As I was reviewing Nordhold, Season 2 released, so it added a bunch of new stuff, adjustments, and improvements, and there’s still more on the way according to the roadmap. More towers, more spells, and general performance improvements are just a few left in the pipeline. If you’re sticking with it, you’ll be greatly rewarded.