I like to make fun of games trying to be too grimdark and edgy. Dead in Vinland seemed like it was going that direction. You’re managing a family cast out of Viking society and thrown into a strange new world where they must struggle to survive. Somewhere in this catalogue of woe, the narrator grimly intones, “It’s like the skalds said, you can’t always get what you want.” Alright, Game, my bad for judging you too quickly.
Dead in Vinland
Developer: CCCP
Price: $19.99
Platform: PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a PC code for review
So they wash up on shore and have to struggle to stay alive. The developers want to call it a survival/management game, but really, it’s closer to a visual novel with a very number-intensive stat and crafting system than what I think of as a survival game. The screens are static, the animations are few, and most of what you’re doing is setting up for the day.
Every day, you have a morning slot and an evening slot. Each character can do one task during a slot. These are things like gathering water or wood, scavenging for useful bits and bobs, exploring the island, or even taking a nap. However, each time a character does a thing, stats move around. This can be good–they get better at scavenging and crafting–or this can be bad–they reached into that bush for some tasty food and got bitten by a snake instead.
And human needs pile up relentlessly. Everyone needs food. Everyone needs water. There’s a stat measuring relationships between the characters, so be nasty to the wife’s sister too many times and she may get depressed and your wife may hate you. During one run, my teenage daughter complained about being shipwrecked on an abandoned island in the middle of nowhere with copious amounts of sarcasm. Naturally, I dadded out. I AM TRYING TO HAVE A NICE EXILE HERE WITH THE FAMILY, KID, GO SCAVENGE SOME WOOD.
In addition to needs, you have to balance everyone’s emotional state, so someone hungry may also be getting angry–I mean I get salty when my blood sugar is low and I just live in a sunken swamp in New Orleans rather than a shipwrecked island beyond mortal ken–and that can feed into other decisions you have to make, like who gets food when food gets scarce.
Most importantly–and game endingly–there’s a Depression stat you have to manage. Naturally, everyone’s depressed at being exiled to a forsaken land in the middle of nowhere. They are probably going to get more depressed if you don’t feed them or if they’re dehydrated. It’s very easy to slip into a death spiral where someone gets depressed and doesn’t work enough to gather resources, so food gets scarce and then everyone gets more depressed.
When that depression stat maxes out, that character kills themselves, and if it’s any of your main party, it’s game over.
At night, everyone hunkers down in the shelter and you distribute the day’s food and water. And then comes exposition time, where the characters talk amongst themselves and usually wind up bickering. Imagine being stuck on an island with your relatives and having to do ridiculous manual labor. I called it summer vacation with my dad.
There’s even a combat system for when the camp gets raided. It’s similar to Darkest Dungeon in that it’s easy to grasp, but managing everyone and their abilities is surprisingly engrossing. However, this is just a group of humans. Viking humans, but humans. They’re fragile, and it’s easy to get cocky and wind up with a bunch of wounded people that can’t work.
Dead in Vinland is very much a learn by doing and by screwing up kind of game. It requires a lot of trial and error and digging through screens and reading descriptions to figure out which items and jobs influence which stats. Sometimes it makes sense. Build a fishing camp to get more fish. Sometimes it’s a little more opaque. For example, you have your existing hovel where characters can rest if they get tired, but if you build a dedicated Rest Area, they can rest there and another character can comfort them and they’ll get better rest and be slightly less depressed, but a “rest area” doesn’t seem like something urgently worth building.
The upside is that replays do vary a fair amount. Some events are fixed by the storylines, but there’s enough randomness that it doesn’t get too samey. As an example, sometimes you don’t stumble on another soul for days. Sometimes you find a shady Jesuit priest. Sometimes you find a one-legged man and his wife and their baby. Everyone’s welcome in camp initially because you need bodies to throw at the tasks of survival. But as with everything, when food runs short or relationships go sour, there’s a decision to be made, and someone gets voted out.
The Final Word
Dead in Vinland is only going to appeal to the more hardcore life simulation fan. There’s very little action except the occasional combat and not much adventuring to control. It’s more like Football Manager or Out of the Park Baseball than the usual survival games. You make decisions, look at numbers, press the button, and see how the turn plays out. Sometimes the numbers go in good directions, sometimes they go in bad directions, and then you solve the new problems that arise. Let’s call it Swiss Family Bjornson 2018.
– MonsterVine Review Score: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair
