Northern Journey

You can clearly see the passion in this game from the developer who made it, from the combat, the environments and music, he even makes his own assets which is rare nowadays.
It always amazes me when a solo developer manages to capture my attention so well, compared to the soulless AAA cash-grab games.
Thank you Slid for making a wonderful game! :)

This is what happens to European children who do not put 3 roasted chestnuts in their second most used left boot during the 15th winter solstice of WalpurgiskriemhildoktaviagrethchenNacht

A game made by a true auteur, constantly pushing its own boundaries and surprising at every turn.
It's a thin line between genius and insanity, and this developer's mind walks it like an acrobat.

In no other game I've never felt more like I was in the middle of the wilderness. It comes a lot closer to how these environments really are than how they are usually portrayed in fantasy, without losing the fantasy edge.
I think "Journey" is a title that fits the game really well! You do go on a great journey. I really enjoyed it.

The kind of game you don't want to end.
Northern Journey is top of my list when it comes to atmospheric adventure games.
Northern Journey's art style is fantasy with exaggerations and highly detailed environments, it is all incredibly unique and satisfying to look at. Human NPC's are creepy and scruffy, monsters/creatures are gross and feel threatening, and the way the environment is detailed is impressive, reading that the dev took hikes and studied the flora is obvious with how detailed the grasses,brush,moss and trees are. One of my favorite details in the environments is the scale of the playable areas as well as the backdrop. The developer used verticality very well to where even smaller areas felt large in scale.
Weapons like the slingshot and bear bow were very satisfying to use and felt good to use. Not much hand holding went on throughout the game other than in the form of your journal, you have an empty map with no cursors and are tasked with filling it out as you explore. Another thing I appreciated was the breaks in between fighting and exploring, games get things wrong in my opinion when you're always on the run fighting and never able to slow down. Lots of really cool things in Northern Journey, it felt like it had a little bit of everything, from diving underwater in a submersible, flying over glaciers on a glider, exploring forests and fighting dudes with a slingshot. Northern journey is a great game and I highly recommend supporting it and the developer.
Some things I would change/add onto in the game:
-More of a solid ending. After fighting the "main antagonist" we have another part of the game to go fight the last boss. Felt like it could of been an optional quest. From what I understand the game was developed before the story was done being written so not much could be done.
-Greater use of and more of friendly NPC's and non-hostile NPC's.
-Greater use of glider and diving suit/vehicle.
-More exploring in later areas of the game. The Glacier area. Volcano and frozen mountains felt a little linear and just there to move the story.
-Optional quests throughout the game/miss-able quests.

This game is just incredible. It's a must-play for its atmosphere only.
It's so weird and creative in its ideas, I love it. You can really feel the passion the dev has for it.
The gameplay isn't great but it never prevents you from having a great time.

This review does not contain any spoilers.
Northern Journey is a clever exploration game with bizarre designs that always keeps throwing something new at you!
I played the game completely blind, didnt know what the gameplay was like whatsoever, never watched the trailers or anything. If you can, try to play it blind too! Throughout, the game always kept throwing new stuff at me, new weapons, new mechanics, always new locations and enemies too! There are a couple of really great segments that took me completely by surprise and some triggered deep primal fears in me. Very few games do that, and that's super special to me.
At first, the UX in the UI was weird and something about how you move ingame made me a little dizzy and motion sick but I got used to it quickly.
Each weapon is satisfying to use with different windup speeds, timing, range and some of them have their own crosshair, making them very varied and there's some challenge in switching between them.
The level design is really tight, it's great how the game takes you out on these adventures and then it loops around to take you back to a familiar place. I found the bits of foreshadowing really nice in the environment, it made me excited to discover more. The environments were all very unique in looks, themes, enemies and music.
This is a very unique game with a mostly consistent quality throughout by a solo game dev from Norway who took a lot of inspiration from the culture, folklore and nature surrounding him, it's well worth checking out Slid Studio's youtube channel if you enjoyed playing the game for more behind the scenes stuff!