The randomly-generated maps do a great job of keeping you on your toes, too, and even though your goal in every stage remains the same (open the portal to the next world via tributes to the gods or battling waves of enemies), a handful of increasing difficulty factors - from larger maps to increasing numbers of enemy combatants - requires you to juggle a steadily growing library of blueprints. They’ll put together what you want, when you want it, and it can be an absolute delight watching them scamper about in the meantime. If you prioritize the right things and give them enough time, your team becomes like an extension of your will. Good thing the AI is mostly competent, then.
You can pave some roads between buildings to encourage more efficient pathfinding (and make the map look a lot more organized in the process), but in the end, the burden of work falls on the artificial intelligence of your crew. Once you’ve broken ground for the Vikings to build on, assigned particular buildings to produce certain kinds of tools and weapons, and ensured that there are enough workers to complete the tasks at hand, there’s little left to do but watch your peons go to work. Other strategy games of this ilk feature building as a main feature, but Valhalla Hills makes construction the main point of interaction for the player. And by building: doing tons and tons of building.
You can do this one of two ways: by opening the magic portals of Valhalla to fight the enemies within, or by appeasing the gods with tributes. Unable to rest their weary bones inside, the honorable Vikings are forced to turn to Leko - demoted to the unflattering position of “God of the Builders” - who will attempt to redeem himself by leading the heroes up the eponymous mountains. The narrative here is a pretty simple one, albeit quite funny and suitable for the temperamental gods of Norse mythology that inspired it: Odin’s in a pissy mood after his son Leko fails an “exam of the gods,” so he slams the door to Valhalla shut. This one, dubbed Valhalla Hills, has a Norse theme - and while it’s not quite the heavenlike hall of the gods it’s named after, it’s well-worth a look for anyone interested in the genre. German developer Funatics has gone back to the drawing board, assembling another addictive, building-oriented strategy game. Fans of The Settlers and Cultures, this is your day.