Following the success of their 2016 release Conduct THIS! (Free) (still one of the best video game titles ever) and its AR spinoff Conduct AR! ($4.99), developer Northplay is now full steam ahead with its next upcoming title, a Viking-themed action RPG tentatively called Norse. The main feature of Norse is that it can be played entirely with one hand, and by the looks of it it controls a bit like a hybrid between Prettygreat’s Land Sliders (Free) and Lucky Kat’s Beat Street (Free). As a big fan of one-handed portrait games, including those two influences, color me pretty excited. Northplay has been working on Norse for all of 2018 so far, and they’re taking a very open approach to its development. This includes creating video developer logs (complete with amazing intro sequences) that update viewers on how things are progressing with the game. They’ve just released their third one this week, but I’m going to go ahead and post all three of them here as they’re well worth watching to get a great idea of what Norse will be all about.
As you can see, Norse is a lovely looking game for sure, but Northplay has also created a really neat game loop that seems well-suited for mobile. Most of the development time thus far has dealt with prototyping all sorts of control options, but now that they’ve settled on one that feels good the game itself is really starting to take shape in the past month or so. They’re now readying the game for its first external beta, and Northplay is taking an interesting approach to this as well. Rather than crowdfunding the project through traditional means, Northplay has set up a Patreon where anybody who wants to follow along with the development or participate in beta testing can do so by supporting one of the Patreon tiers monthly. At the $1 or more tier you’ll get access to all their behind-the-scenes posts about Norse’s development, and for the $10 tier you’ll also get access to monthly beta builds. There’s also a $25 tier where you’ll get all of that plus a shoutout on the devlog videos like the ones above plus get your name in the credits of the game. These small studios are sure getting creative in finding ways to get financial support for their products, but if you’re especially interested in the development process or playing early builds and helping shape the outcome of Norse then this Patreon approach is pretty neat. We’ll definitely be keeping our eyes on Norse as its development continues this year.
