Dead in Vinland

It's a, challenging, Survival game, at the normal settings, with good mechanics and a bit of a special humor that i like. Very comparable to a other game of this company but with a different setting and Dead in Vinland is, in my opinion, better
Your Viking family survivors have different character attributes. Strength, Intelligence and many more.
The Attributes get used to calculate the more specific character statistics of scavenge, building, exploring, fishing and so on.
Now it's your turn to help them to survive as best as they can.
So you start to gathering ressources as different food, wood, ropes and many more.
Build a fire place, sleeping area and many more to survive.
Cook food to make it more useful, more durable, less sickening and try to do all needed work (get enough water, make it drinkable, collecting berries, hunting, fishing, scavenge, exploring, building and many more).
Try to avoid heavy injuries, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes.
On top of that your survivors have depressions and each encounter or work have a effect, mostly a negative one, at the depressions. Only breaks at the "tavern" to recover bring a significant change to the positive. You need at least 2 people at the "tavern" and their interaction "mood" change then too. At the other hand that are two people that can't look for food, build something, explore and all that other needed things.
So you are always in the situation of "i can't fulfill all needs" and must prioritize.
Exploring the island is one of the most important things, that bring the most encounters and ressources. It should be done often. In general should you try, later when it is possible, to make work with 2 people of your team because if 2 people, or more, make the same work that have, a positive effect on the mood of that persons. And the depression are the biggest enemy after the thirst and starvation.
It give significant changes to the first game.
I can say "You aren't alone at this (is)land", that leads to taxes, where you decide if you don't pay them, pay them in a reduced ammount as demanded, in the demanded ammount or a higher. Each of your picks leads to other happenings in the future.
The second big change are that it give, turn based, fights. From my experience are the fights not easy and you should use your brain.
The fighting system leads to a change at the level up system. You get a few, random, possibilities offered and need to pick one of them. A part are for hunting and so on -but now mostly with other abilities that gets reduced when you raise something else-, a part have a influence at how greedy you eat and a other part are raise your fighting abilities. The fighting abilities bring you nothing at the daily survival work, because of all that is it difficult to decide which upgrade/skill are the best to pick.
If you loose a game you aren't dead but heavy injured that needs a lot of time to heal and lower your daily tasks abilities to, partly, very low levels.
Pro's:
+ Lots of possibilities with the characters and the tasks
+ Good painted
+ Humor
+ The difficult level is a bit lower as by the first game (Dead in Bermuda)
+ A good bunch of the, bad, edges of the first game are lowered or gone
+ New level up system
+ The game have trading cards
Neutral:
~The medieval talks are good.... but sometimes, special at the begin, the daughter slides to a "ghetto slang" speech that don't fit into a medieval setting.
~I think the fights can be done in a more interesting way as presented right now (more different enemies, partly clearer infos about your and the enemy skills)
Con's:
- The standard settings for drinking and eating are much too low and it is unclear for me why i need to look each night, after i set how much water they get, how the drink... or better hear.
- It wasn't clear enough what you can do with a "building/station" you build before you finished it. As example it is clear that a stable for sheeps need 1 sheep but you don't know that you can put max. 3 sheeps in it, that they need daily food -and which one- that you can get mlilk and make cheese with it and such things. That are bad things because to build such a building/station needs the ressources that you gather in 1-2 weeks and if you builded it and haven't a use of it, it is frustrating and the buildings rotten and must be repaired from time to time too. That needs someone that do it and the ressources. Both aren't available for other highly needed tasks and buildings.
Conclusion:
I think it is a good survival game with a lot of possibilities, special if you like "i can't fulfill all needs" and to be forced to prioritize.
I like the humor that are used very often, at paintings and texts. The medieval setting fits better and isn't so often used as the setting of the first game. It brings a bit of fresh wind.
In the end i had much fun with it but a few frustrating moments too.
I want to recommend that game to people that like that type of survival games and to people that like a bit humor in games. The devs make jokes about a lot of stereotypes.
Rating:
7,5/10
Follow Masafors Group of Friends, if you want to read more Reviews like that one in english, german or dutch.

Dead in Vinland is a sequel to the previous game, Dead in Bermuda, and I must say that the devs did their homework right, improved on a lot of aspects of the original game, while at the same time making it unique and a true sequel that doesn't feel in any way a copy-paste of the original game, even though the general idea remains the same.
The game itself is great, it's a mix of a survival management game with a lot of RPG elements and a huge portion of RNG. It's a very challenging game and it took me a few restarts before I got used to it, and that comes from somebody who did play Bermuda first, so it might be a good idea to get used to that one before going straight to Vinland, unless you don't mind difficulty level set at far above the expectations, even from a survival game.
The only thing I don't consider that good is how much the game depends on the RNG. RNG is everywhere, every single number you see on the screen goes through it, and sometimes there is really too much of it, especially if you do not intend to save scum all the time. This wasn't something that stopped me from playing, as I'm happy to say that I did finish the whole game, but it's definitely something to keep in mind if you're a player that doesn't enjoy games that are driven by the RNG almost in its entirety. Sure, you still make a lot of decisions and micro-managing, but the RNG factor is huge enough to put equality sign between the best decision with the worst RNG, and the worst decision with the best RNG, which can feel really annoying from time to time.
All in all I consider it a good game, especially for people that enjoyed original Dead in Bermuda concept, for those that didn't have an opportunity to do so, I'd recommend starting with that one, it's very similar on the overall concept.

Duration 55 hours
For me this is an almost perfect game. An excellent management sim that "fixed" most of the problems of Dead in Bermuda. Particularly regarding illness. Dead in Vinland has a wonderful array of traits that have timed effects on them, like coughing, sneezing, sweating etc that last for a number of days and can turn into something else if not cured. Again, it's a constant balance of risk versus reward and positive versus negative.
Review: 24 hours in, day 77, survivalist, true viking. so far, I always feel under pressure, there is always something to accomplish, something that is urgent, lots I WANT to do, but can't. Each day the choices are deliciously gruelling. Now if I could only find another ancient knowledge... grrrr!
Finished Day hundred and something. Loved it.
I particularly enjoy raising sheep, crafting, hunting, using traps, cooking, and all the humor, story and map events. Greatly enjoying this one.
9/10

Pros
- Beautiful story and characters (I intentionally postponed ending the game just to see how the story and development of the characters would unfold)
- Nice art despite the simplistic graphics. Captures the theme and setting well.
- Interesting turn-based mechanics - Combat is simplistic but adequate; interesting interaction and synergy between the different fighter classes.
Cons
- Too much RNG in the gameplay. During the beginning of the game where each move is vital and resources are limited, you can really be put on the back foot by bad RNG. For example, your characters may end up with "crushed hands" or some other serious injury or sickness just randomly and you have little or no means to heal / cure him in the beginning. Also, combat is also based on RNG, which again, can be frustrating if you keep missing hits despite decent percentage of hitting.
- Success during story events are also based on RNG. Some require continuous succession in order to complete (i.e. just imagine trying to succeed in 3-4 rolls of 50%-70% in succession) and when you fail, you get hit by a serious penalty, and have to wait a couple of days to recover in order to try again. It can get tired after a few such tries.
- Character progression / leveling is also quite random. Every time one of your characters level up, you are presented with 5 random skill upgrades to choose from (you choose one out of the five). These are randomly chosen from a big pool of skill upgrades, thus, more often than not, you are presented with a selection of skill upgrades that is not relevant at all for the character.
Tips
- I hate to recommend this, but if you find yourself getting very frustrated with the RNG, try save-scumming (i.e. save, quit and reload). I use this occasionally to tackle really difficult to complete story events.
- While you try to get your characters to specialize in a certain daily tasks, don't put all your eggs in one basket. You may lose one or more of your side characters during the game (hint : this may not be within your control) and this can really a problem if you do not have another character that can do the task adequately. Also, where possible, invest in your core characters (i.e. the 4 family characters).
- Create a core combat team, preferably with one or more "looters" in the mix (they will bring in more loot post combat), and seek out combat where possible as the loot from combat can be very useful especially during early game.
Overall
- Beautiful and enjoyable game. It shows that this is a passion project. My main grouse is the overuse of the RNG mechanic; I think it would be better if RNG is removed from certain aspects of the game, e.g. skill leveling (to be replaced with a skill tree that is driven by the character class).

Fun game overall, quite an improvement from the developers' older title (Dead in Bermuda), but there's still room for improvement. If you like micro managing characters and their needs in a survival setting, this game will keep you busy for a while.
This might be just me, but after a 40h first playthrough, I feel the game overstayed its welcome somewhat at the end. It didn't help that the "speed-up button" is basically unusable, as it's too fast. You can hardly see what is happening if you activate it. I suggest including a more sensible "x2 speed" button in future titles, next to the "SUPER TURBO" button that exists already. In terms of difficulty, I found the game to be just right. I played in True Viking + Survival and I found the beginning extremely difficult, whereas mid-game took some getting used to, and the end-game was a breeze.
Keeping it spoiler-free, I gotta say I disliked the "two endings" approach, especially since the game doesn't communicate there's a "point of no return" at all for one specific quest. The game has basically two main quests, where one is extremely imminent and the other feels like it can be done whenever. Well, you're supposed to do the non-death-threatening quest first and then go for the other one. If you don't do it in the order the devs want you to do it, game ends with a "game over" of a sort and the credits roll. That was not cool, but at least your ironman save doesn't get wiped so you can go back and do it the proper way. The point of no return should've been indicated with a pop-up or warning of some kind.
On the technical side, I encountered some inconsistencies in the story, like characters talking about things that have not taken place yet (I guess I encountered a tile or two before I was supposed to?) but overall nothing game-breaking.
Story-wise, I found the supernatural elements of the game a bit boring and cliche, but the characters themselves were very well written and I loved the interactions between them. For me, this was the best part of the game. I wish there were more of these, especially between the secondary characters, who only seem to interact with the four main protagonists and not among themselves. It was an overall cool story and I suffered with the characters whenever something bad happened (basically all the time). The inclusion of the ironman mode made it even better as the stakes couldn't be any higher.
Good game overall! Looking forward to the next title, thanks for this cool adventure :)

Outstanding Game!
Not your everyday RPG and somehow turnbased.
It is just the setting, the music, the characters... just perfect.
The odds of succeeding can be frustrating at first but you will get used to it.
And once you master the game it literarelly consums all your free time. Om nom nom.
10/10 I will watch this developers career with great interest.

PROS
+ Fun to read character dialog and get to know everyone.
+ Challenging to keep everyone alive.
+ Good sound and music.
CONS
+ No way to skip dialog you have already read, while not skipping stuff you have never seen. This can ruin a second play through if you don't want to re-read everything. It is technically a rogue-like, so there will be a second play through.
+ If you let one person die you lose. You can find new people so I don't understand why? Let me play until everyone dies?