Frozenheim
by Aethyna
Jul 4, 2022 |
1
Votes |
35
Played |
0
Reviews
8
rate
Genres:
StrategyGraphics:
3DLabels:
War , Empire Building , Vikings , Real Time , Medieval AgePlatforms:
Publishers:
Hyperstrange Frozenheim is a Viking-themed real-time strategy game where you play as an up-and-coming Jarl who was betrayed by a close ally. With your village completely destroyed and forced out of your homeland, you vow to return stronger than ever and with the blessing of the gods to take revenge on your enemies! Play Now Similar Games Played
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Summary
Frozenheim is a Viking-themed real-time strategy game where you play as an up-and-coming Jarl who was betrayed by a close ally. With your village completely destroyed and forced out of your homeland, you vow to return stronger than ever and with the blessing of the gods to take revenge on your enemies! Besides its story-driven campaign missions, you can also play its survival mode in co-op, PvP skirmish or just kick back and relax with its city-building mode.
Plotline
You are Gorm and you are a Jarl of a small settlement. Your ally, Jarl Erland asked for your help to repel some bandits… which is a fairly odd request since he has a pretty mighty force of his own and could have made quick work of those bandits himself.
Anyhow, a request is a request and he is, after all, a close ally whom you’ll want to stay on his good side, so you took your army and went off to do his bidding and recapture the lookout tower that the bandits have taken over.
However, when you return, you found out that it was a trap and that you’ve been betrayed. While you and your army were away, the Jarl has sent an advance force to raid your settlement and burn it to the ground. Despite being able to repel his advance forces, you know you couldn’t take on his main army which is also on the way… so you’ve decided to make your escape and live to fight another day.
Not only do you vow to return with a mightier army to take your revenge on the two-faced Jarl, you will return with the blessing of all the gods behind your back. After all, legend has it that only the finest warriors may meet the gods and bring their generous blessings back to the lands, and that person is going to be you!
After you’ve done with this campaign story, the game unlocks 4 separate mini-campaigns, each with 4 missions total, similar to Gorm’s campaign, with you taking control of various characters in each of the clans on Frozenland, namely the Bear Clan, the Wolf Clan, the Crow Clan and the Deer Clan.
Gameplay
The gameplay in Frozenheim is very similar, in essence, to all the popular RTS games like Warcraft and Starcraft back during the genre’s heyday. However, I’d like to point out that although there’s no difficulty setting for the game’s campaign, it is fairly easy even if you’re not too familiar with RTS games in general, thanks to the tutorial. The tutorial doesn’t cover everything though, so you’ll still need to figure out some stuff yourself if you want to get stronger units for instance.
As you might expect, the gameplay here mainly revolves around building a robust “base”, a.k.a. your village, amass a strong enough army, and go do whatever that needs doing, be it capturing a runestone or clearing an area of bandits. To do so, you’ll need resources which you can gather from the environment by building the appropriate gathering buildings like the Collector’s Guild or the Fisherman’s Wharf.
You can also convert raw materials into more refined products, such as producing clothes from skins at the Tanner or producing metal bars from ores at the Bloomery. However, there are limits as to how much you can gather especially for resources like stone and metal ores since the deposits are limited so you’ll want to make sure you focus on the objectives and get them done as soon as you can.
Similar to Frostpunk, you’ll need to assign workers to each building to make them operational. Naturally, the more you add (with the cap), the faster you’ll get your resources. Some buildings are affected by the seasons as well. For instance, the Farmhouse and the Orchard won’t work during winter because… well, you can’t grow anything at that time of the year.
As a Jarl, it’s your job to keep your people happy and productive. This means managing your resources and making sure your people have enough food as well as having structures nearby that make them happy, like neighboring houses, a Healer’s Hut, a Well and even a shrine or two. Warriors fallen during combat will also cause some amount of discontent among your people. This is why you’ll need a burial chamber and regularly organize ceremonial events to clear the chamber and keep discontent on the down low.
Although the enemy can’t kill simple peasants in this game, you will still want to set up defenses, especially if you plan on mobilizing your army elsewhere. You won’t want to have your Jarl’s Homestead destroyed by your sneaky enemy while your army is off doing something else and can’t make it back in time to defend your settlement.
That being said, since you are restricted to only be able to build within a limited circular range around your homestead, you can’t really box up your base with walls and gates. Some clever designing is required if you want to do so, but most of the time, a series of watchtowers work great on their own. No walls or gates needed!
As mentioned, each scenario in the campaign comes with specific objectives that you’ll need to complete in the order they are presented. There are also plenty of optional side quests that you can take on such as random bandit encampments which would grant you extra resources as a reward if you destroy them, as well as requests from the locals who needed help. There are also plenty of stashes that you can find and capture for extra resources, and if you're lucky, you may even bump into a trader who will trade just about everything you need.
In terms of combat, the game offers several unit types that are all made available to you almost at the get-go (within the first few campaign missions). Although you can technically pit them indiscriminately against the enemy, there’s an advantage to knowing which units excel against what units. For instance, the shield bearer is very effective against archers as long as you remember to activate their Shield Wall ability, which allows them to have 100% resistance against ranged attacks.
Unlike a typical RTS game though, you can pause your game at any time. While paused, you can issue orders to your troops, place buildings for your people to construct, and queue up upgrades. Personally, I think this is very useful when you are ambushed by enemies and need a moment to restrategize your troops, whether to get the units to fall back or to activate certain abilities that will give them the advantage when taking on their enemies.
Besides unit upgrades which you can purchase from the Weaponsmith, there are also upgrades that you can research at the Elders’ Hall after choosing which clan to align yourself with, though in specific campaign missions, you can’t really choose your clan. Each upgrade is grouped into tiers and you don’t need to unlock all upgrades in a previous tier before moving to the higher tiered ones. Most clan upgrades will grant you a special unit that you can then recruit from your Training Field, in addition to the 5 to 6 unit types that everyone will access to.
At one point, once you have the corresponding runestone captured, you'll also be able to receive Blessings from your temple. Some blessings are more helpful to you economically while others are useful for your army. Depending on what you need and which blessings you've unlocked, you'll be able to choose the blessing that best suit the situation at hand.
As mentioned earlier as well, the game starts you off with a general campaign where you play as Gorm, a Jarl who was double-crossed by his ally, but once you’re done with that one, you’ll then unlock 4 more mini-campaigns. I call them “mini-campaigns” mainly because each of them consists of only 4 missions and have independent stories delving more into each of the four clans in Frozenheim.
In addition to campaigns, the game also comes with custom scenarios that includes skirmish mode, a relaxing city building mode, and survival where you’ll need to defend against waves of enemies of increasing difficulty. For these scenarios, you’ve got up to 9 different maps to choose from and various parameters to customize.
As much fun as I had with the game, Frozenheim isn’t without its flaws. I’ve encountered a sudden crash within the first 2 hours of play. There’s no error or anything warning – the game just froze. Thank goodness for autosave! The game also seems to use up quite a bit of VRAM so you’ll want to make sure you have plenty to go around. There are also some graphical issues like units getting stuck in the environment or that the AI pathing seems a bit wonky especially when ships are involved.
Community
Frozenheim currently has a multiplayer mode so you can play skirmish against another player or its survival mode in co-op. However, as with most indie titles, there aren’t many players in the lobby so you might want to grab a friend instead.
Graphics/ Sound
The visuals here are pretty impressive. The maps just look so good! Despite having plenty of foliage and trees as well as mountains, cliffs and narrow passes, the rotate-able camera allows you to adjust your view so you can have an unobstructed view of your units as you control them. If you want to zoom right into the battle and enjoy the view, you can do so too! There's even a photo mode for those who love taking scenic screenshots.
The game also comes with fantastic theme-appropriate soundtracks. The music that plays during combat is just on-point. However, there’s a rather jarring overlaps between the voice of the narrator and the background music during cutscenes. Sometimes, the background music is so loud that it partially or completely covered the narrator’s voice. Thank goodness there are subtitles!
Conclusion
Frozenheim may not be the next Age of Empires but it’s a fairly competent RTS game that has a Vikings theme and lore that helped it stand out from the masses. Besides offering several story-driven mini-campaigns, the game’s true replayability comes from its custom scenarios whether it is skirmishes with the AI or another player, its relaxing city building mode, or its survival mode which is best played co-op. So, if you enjoy most RTS game, no matter how “easy” they are, you might want to check out this game!
Frozenheim Blog
New Game Added: Frozenheim
by Aethyna
Jul 4, 2022
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