Developer: Plausible Concept
Publisher: Raw Fury
Reviewed on: Switch
Purchased.
Don’t let Bad North’s simplicity fool you, this is a challenging, clever game that makes the most of it’s simple systems. You must defend your small island homes from invading forces by taking advantage of the terrain and time. Through a basic upgrade system, you can craft your army to be exactly what you want, which also makes losing a squad that much more painful. It all comes together to form a satisfying run-based defense game hidden behind a pastel aesthetic.
The encounters in Bad North are pretty straight forward and conflicts have a loose rock-paper-scissor set up. Soldiers with shields can protect against arrows, but don’t pack a huge punch. Spear infantry are good at poking at the enemy, but can’t attack while they move. Archers can pick units off from afar, unless they have the previously mentioned shields. It’s all about putting units in the right spot to make the most of their strengths while exploiting enemy weaknesses. As your run begins, the enemies are basic and light, but the farther along the map you go the harder the encounters get. Much like FTL before it, you are trying to get as far to the right as you can before the encroaching enemy catches up with you or all your units die. Also like FTL, each run consists of a procedurally generated set of islands, so you never have the same run twice. The map shows you a lot of information and has several paths, you can even see a basic layout of each island, so you can choose ones that will yield the most currency. It’s just as satisfying to choose the best path as it is to actually fight the battles.
Some islands have random pick ups on them as well. Things like giant hammers and bombs can be equipped to one of your units, giving them a one-time-use special ability that resets on each island. You can also find and recruit more units to command on certain islands. The more units you have the more varied your fighting force can be because each unit can be upgraded. New units start off as generic sword fighters, but using the currency you acquire by defending islands, you can upgrade them down one of three paths: swordsmen, spearmen, or archers.
The way you interact in combat is a tale of two control schemes, unfortunately. In handheld mode, the best way to play the game is with the touch screen. You can easily select and move units with high precision. However, using a controller is more cumbersome by comparison. Making sure you have the right unit selected and then using the analog stick to choose the destination can lead to a lot of mistakes. It is also easier to zoom and rotate the camera with the touch screen than it is with buttons and analog sticks. While a gamepad isn’t completely unusable, it’s clear that the game was designed to take advantage of the Switch’s touch screen.
The other issue is performance. During my playtime I encountered framerate drops near the end of missions and on the world map. I also ran into an issue where a single enemy glitched out and couldn’t be killed. As a result, it ended up being a failed run because in order to progress you need to kill every enemy, and the game never registered that that enemy could be killed. Finally, the game hard crash once in the middle of a mission. While these instances were rare, there is definitely some improvement that could be made to the performance and stability of the game.
Bad North looks and sounds great. Your tiny little soldiers bop around the map, and their waving flags help you quickly identify them. The soft, pastel palette is contrasted by the blood that flies about during combat. (The blood effect can be turned off if in the settings.) Finally, there are a lot of little sound ques that help draw your attention to certain events. It’s all held together by a very catchy, and appropriately epic soundtrack.
Bad North excels in providing the player with a stiff challenge without feeling unfair. It also manages to hide that challenge behind a simple interface, beautiful art, and music. It’s unfortunate that it has a handful of technical issues, but perhaps these can be ironed out over time. Issues aside, Bad North is a satisfying “one more run” style game that is a great fit for the Switch.
