Northgard is a recently announced viking-themed strategy game from the developers behind the Evoland series. While the full details are still currently unknown, the main gameplay premise behind Northgard revolves around exploring and conquering new lands, establishing self-sustaining settlements and villages, befriending or waging war against the rather strange locals, and naturally, achieving victory through numerous means.

Since trying to explain what a strategy game is all about through words alone is a nearly impossible task, Shiro Games have just recently posted a gameplay video showcasing Northgard in its early alpha state. Have a look, its quite interesting:

First thing first, I must say I absolutely love the presentation. The music, the buildings, the simple but colorful environments, all of it combines together to give Northgard an incredible atmosphere. It might not be the most important thing in an RTS, but good visual design goes a long way towards making things far more enjoyable to play. On a similar topic, I also enjoy how you can practically expand your once humble village straight across the entire map! Not only does this give you a good sense of progression, it also makes the game a lot tougher as you now have more vulnerable areas you need to protect, and that is an aspect of strategy I can certainly appreciate.

What I don't like, however, is how basic the combat seems to be. I will fully admit I could be wrong here, it is just an alpha video after all, but the combat seems to be as simple as clicking on all of your units and sending them to bash their heads against the enemy. Without any special abilities, or just the ability to force wounded units to retreat, I can see the combat becoming less about tactics and more about hoping you've preemptively built the counters to what your opponents have already created.

Whether this is actually the case or not, I honestly can't tell you right now, but we'll find out soon enough as Northguard will be heading to Steam Early Access in the near future.