Star Vikings Forever is a strange little game that felt like it was tiptoeing between being a puzzle game and a strategy RPG. You go through grid-based maps of enemies, traps and treasures, surmounting considerable odds by using your party’s skills and the enemies own attacks against themselves, while leveling up character, recruiting new ones and getting gear for them. I wish it had chosen what it wanted to be more definitely. As it stands, it was a bit frustrating no matter which way I would approach it.
Most levels go this way - you have a large grid of enemies and traps, and you need to get all your party members from the left to the right. While only able to move forward, they all have special abilities governed by their energy resource, which ranges from shooting any space on the map, triggering traps, moving things around and placing shields on your characters. When enemies get hit, they attack - usually in front of them, but sometimes all around them as well - and the enemies are really powerful, so walking up to them and hitting them is almost always only the right move when they are one hit from death and cannot counterattack.
Where this starts making less sense is in the way abilities and upgrades blend with that kind of gameplay. I would’ve preferred if each level had ‘one solution’, or at least a critical path that, if figured out, would allow everyone to go through. Shoot at one specific enemy to trigger a chain reaction, then hit this trap, then move that character to another row… But your abilities are often percentage based. Characters will block damage a certain percentage of the time, you’ll recover energy after killing an enemy only sometimes… So this means it’s not really a puzzle game. Some levels I had trouble with until I just was lucky and I had to buy healing items a-plenty to finish others.
And as a strategy RPG, it’s frustrating because of the high difficulty. Enemies hit really hard, you aren’t allowed many mistakes (because you can only walk forward), some enemies will punish you severely if you don’t defeat them. There are no dire consequences for losing, but grinding easier maps to get gold and experience didn’t seem that compelling to me.
I can’t say I thoroughly enjoyed Star Vikings Forever, but I somehow appreciate what they tried to do. If the whole thing had been easier I would’ve probably gone through all of it, but as it was I just couldn’t. That’s a shame, I love snails! If you enjoy strategy games and can tolerate losing and restarting a lot, you could give it a shot, it’s a competent product.
