Crush waves of enemies to save princess in Day of the Viking
Day of the Viking is a new game from Adult Swim involving a castle, a princess and vikings. The vikings are coming for the princess's treasure and as the castle defender, you need to destroy them. The game offers numerous ways to go about doing this and there's 80 levels with varying locations and amounts of vikings. As they get stronger, unlock stronger weapons to take them down and complete harder missions in each level. The app is universal for iPhone and iPad and sells for US$2.99. It requires no earlier than iOS 7.0.
If you're familiar with the Adult Swim suite of iOS games and even just the Adult Swim brand (or network) in general, you'd probably assume Day of the Viking has cartoonish and playful elements to it. You would be correct! The description makes it seem like Day of the Viking is action-packed and potentially violent, but in practice destroying the vikings is a bit similar to playing a game of Angry Birds in which the pigs are moving targets.
The princess of the castle is there to guide you through the first few levels. This is where you learn the essentials of the game. Initially, your only weapon atop the castle is a bow and arrow. Tapping vikings as they head closer shoots directly at them. Then the princess informs you of the slingshot, which can take out more than one viking at a time - useful for when they arrive in groups, which is often. When you pull the slingshot, you're given a sense of the boulder's path to target accurately.
Every time you kill a viking, you earn some points and every so often a coin appears in the field. Tap to retrieve it while simultaneously avoiding vikings, but it's important to nab these for a few reasons. For one, they often appear in missions. To gain all three stars in each round, you have to complete three missions. These vary, but they range from having you collect a certain amount of coins to not taking any damage to the castle from a viking to killing three of them with one rock.
The other aspect is Day of the Viking's currency. The points and coins add and contribute to your amount of gold, which buys boosters to enhance your weapons or upgrades, among some other things. In-app purchases are available to buy packs of gold, too.
The levels are harder than one might expect. By round three or four I had already failed to defend the castle and had to replay the level more than once. To get anywhere in the game, you must rely heavily on boosters and upgrades because your regular weapon set isn't even close to sufficient for defeating the vikings. This increases the likeliness that making an in-app purchase will come into question, which is a little disappointing for a paid game to start.
Day of the Viking is lacking somewhat in originality and unabashedly calls on you a bit too much to spend that gold, but it does have plenty of entertainment value and great design. Get the universal Day of the Viking game in the App Store for $2.99.
