Publisher/Developer: Slick Entertainment
Platform: PS4, Steam (PC,MAC)
Genre: Beat 'em up
Rating: "Positive"
Players: 3 player co-op online / local
Price: $14.99 USD
Release Date: October 4th 2016
Trailer
"Grab your trusty sword, strap on a fearsome helmet, and plunge into the chaotic fray of Viking Squad! In this three player co-op brawler you must put a stop to the wildly mischievous Loki and reopen the gates to Valhalla. Find a friend for local co-op couch play or find a match online!"
"Runs at 60fps and up to 4k"
Loot style beat em up on lanes that focusses on risk/reward runs across branching paths.
1) Go on a run to make money and collect treasure.
2) Get back to camp and end your run by either dying, beating a main boss, or loading loot onto your Viking Ship
3) Use collected treasure to upgrade your character stats or buy weapons and armor
4) Use Gold to buy items for your run (potions, keys, Specials)
5) Any unused treasures are discarded before the next run. Money can be hoarded from run to run.
The catch. There's key pieces of loot that you need to carry from the level to either cash in for treasure at your camp if you're able to load it onto your ship, or find an NPC that wants the treasure that will often allow give you passage to a branching path. The risk / reward is that the branching path is often challenging and if you can survive it (pack plenty of potions), you'll make your treasure back, and then some. If you don't survive the branching path, the treasure you just carried across 3 stages (it gets damaged and needs to survive the trip) is gone.
Movement
The game is split across lanes that vary from 1-5 lanes. Traversing is simply pressing up or down and movement is smooth. Movement across lanes are encouraged by having gaps in some and not the other (Yes you can double dragon 2 the shit out of enemies by shoving them off ledges.), raised inclines, environmental dangers and enemy attacks that stretch horizontally and vertically.
Combat
Every character has an Attack, Rune Attack, Jump, Defensive move and Special Attack
- Attacks - The button you mash to do damage to enemies. As you mash this button, each character has a different 3rd consecutive that will treat the standard enemy body differently (Smack away, Smack upward, etc)
- Jumping - The same for everyone, however different characters have different traits in the air. Some can attack more some less. When the move is unlocked, you can launch an enemy in the air by pressing attack and rune attack in combination
- Defensive Move - Most characters have a slide move that have invincibility frames that allow you to avoid being attacked. The shield viking just throws his shield up and does not move.
- Rune Attacks - Underneath your health bar is a rechargable rune that can be spent to perform a character specific attack. Some characters have combos that allow you to unleash your rune attack without spending the rune energy. You start off with 1 rune. Equipment supplies you with more.
- Stomping - When an enemy is downed you can stomp them out. It's not like the X-men arcade game, the damage you do deals to everyone in the same lane as the stomping
- Grabbing / Throwing - When an enemy is downed you can grab them to either throw them to the other side, or pummel a single enemy.
- Emotes - Use Rune energy to emote / taunt in the game.
- Special attack - Each character has their own screen wide attack that is usable after collecting 4 ores. The ores can be bought or collected as drops.
At the end of runs or after you die, you're brought back to your home base. Where there will be places to trade your collected treasure and gold for equipment and upgrades from the following vendors:
- The Blacksmith - use your treasure to unlock and equip weapons that you find along the run. Boosts your attack, rune attacks, etc.
- The Armory kid - use your treasure to unlock and equip weapons to boose your health, amount of runes, rune recharge rate, etc.
- The Trainer - use your treasure to upgrade your characters max health, rune damage and attack damage.
- The Alchemist - Trade your gold for potions, keys, and other items for your runs.
Resurrecting and Worshipping gods allows you to gain perks and passives depending on which you choose.
I'll leave out on how to resurrect them for now however, the following are the ones I'm aware of:
If you're in single player, and you die, the run is over. You'll get an in-game warning to prompt you to heal.
If you're in multiplayer, your partners have 10 seconds to get healed before the Valkyries take your soul. You can only get revived once per level.
Drop in / Drop out online multi player. At the start screen, you're given the option to choose a private match or find a match.
A private match allows you to invite players from your friends list to join. Alternatively, you can choose to search for a game online to join. If you can find one, you'll join it mid match. You will need to choose a character not currently in use and wait until the player gets to the next stage transition where you'll spawn with full health. If you can't find a game, you'll start a private match automatically.
Netcode ranges from good to great. At worst, you'll notice a few frames of lag between attacking and the hit response. At best it feels like local co-op.
Q. Why is this only a max of 3 players?
A. From the developers: " First it cut down on the amount of cheap deaths by stream lining the chaos on screen. With three players, each can easily focus on a target without having to worry about being side-swiped by incoming attacks from their partners’ foe. It also reduced the amount of network traffic our game requires, allowing for a smoother online experience."
Q.Are there mounts?
A.Yep, there are mounts and they all have different attacks. You can even carry items while on the mounts that will absorb damage
Q.Is there any cross platform play between Steam and PS4?
A.Nope.
Q.How does the lane based aspect feel?
A.I'm usually against movement restrictions in my brawlers. But this game does a great job of filtering out and focusing on the combat so you don't get lost just mashing as you would in other brawlers.
Q. Why do emotes and taunting cost a rune?
A. There are 4 emotes that each character has and I'm guessing its to prevent from spamming them.
Q.How long is the game?
A. Took me about
6 hours solo
Q.What's in the end game?
A.
Hard mode - which I hear has different loot
Boss Rush
Q.Is there a way to execute a special attack in the air?
A.There's about a 1-3 frame window where you can press you Rune attack after you do you XY combo. This will let you do an air attack dash with the berserker viking and shoot an arrow in the air.
Q. Any links to the dev site?
A.A link to their Dev blog where they've been talking about everything from their art to how they built their combat engine and other tech.
https://www.twitch.tv/slickentertainmentinc Their twitch channel where their artist takes requests and I draws blindfolded
Note from OP: This is my first thread. I'll do my best to update regularly. I'm a huge fan of brawlers and beat em ups and I think this one deserves some love.
