Video Game / Northern Journey

"Hop in, the water's fine. You know you want to."

Northern Journey is a 2021 FPS/RPG game by Slid Studio set in a strange Norwegian version of The Middle Ages. The game starts with the unnamed player character rowing through a fjord when unseen assailants pierce the bottom of his boat with an arrow. Barely reaching the shore near the small village of Deadwell, the player character gets recruited by a travelling Flute Player to help him retrieve some Dimensional Violators, powerful artifacts which can open portals into other worlds. The journey will lead the player through forests, swamps, caves and mountains, all the while encountering hostile wildlife, demonic impostors, scheming witches, and worse.

Gameplay takes the form of a first-person-shooter with heavy emphasis on exploration and puzzle solving. The game rapidly switches gears as it progresses, switching from freeform exploration to linear combat gauntlets with abandon. The story sees you trek up and down the fjord, visiting both the highest peaks and the deepest caves. Also noteworthy is the game's arsenal. Due to taking place in a time before firearms, your weapons are ancient missile-launchers such as longbows, hand-axes, crank-operated crossbows, and more.

This game provides examples of the following:

• Anachronism Stew: Downplayed. The game's world for the most part stays in a Medieval European Fantasy setting. For the most part; there are also crank-operated automatic crossbows, most of which are magazine fed, a bathysphere that you get to take down to the bottom of a ghost infested lake (Plus the Nokken), and in that lake is a big, metal, riveted pipe that looks right out of the industrial age.
• Anti-Frustration Features: When the game requires you to be in another area for a plot event and cannot reasonably open up a shortcut, you will often be teleported directly there to save time.
  • Saving is disabled on any precarious ledges or in the middle of an "interaction" (read: near monsters or during a scripted event) to prevent unwinnable situations or accidentally breaking scripts.
• Arc Villain: The Dimensional Violators are being held by different individuals, each of whom takes the stage as the antagonist at a different point in the game.
  • The first are the witch sisters, who are the villains for the first third.
  • The second is the village priest impostor.
  • The third and final is none other than the village idiot.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Ballista and Bear Crossbow deal impressive amounts of damage, fire fast projectiles with generous firing arcs, and can be pre-loaded so they're ready to fire immediately after being brought out. Unfortunately, ammo is hard to come by and it takes several seconds to load each shot. The Ballista in particular has a lengthy unloading animation that must play out before you can reload it, and the recoil throws you back a few feet every time it's fired— often straight off a ledge if you're not careful.
• Big Bad: Arguably the Village Idiot, who stole the Dimensional Violators, fed his pet worm enough to turn it into Nidhogg, and spends the last bit of the game trying to mess with the Flute Player's plans to fix the situation. Despite this, he doesn't really care much about what's going on and is mostly an antagonist through the irritating trouble he causes.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The player will come across many types of invertebrate during the journey, and they all want a piece of them: dragonflies, leeches, spiders, flies, centipedes, bumblebees, spiders, ticks, mosquitoes, diving beetles, spiders...
• Black Comedy: Used frequently to break up some of the tension. The crowning moment is probably the encounter with the witch daughter on the bridge. She eerily walks forward onto the bridge, makes an ominous declaration, then raises her arms and starts shrieking as she sprints towards you... only to slip, fall, and go careening into the ravine below with a splash.
• Boring, but Practical: The stone sling has a bit of wind-up and doesn't do much damage, but it has endless ammunition, a long range if you know how to arc your shots, and it gets a damage upgrade in the latter half of the game.
• Bows Versus Crossbows: Your mainstay weapons during the game will be one heavy-hitting bow and a variety of repeating or heavy crossbows.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The game takes heavy inspiration from Norse myth, but often does so in subtle ways that go against traditional depictions of characters and events. For instance, the Flute Player is heavily inspired by Odin- he's a sly, offputting and devious person who seems to be able to get anywhere in the world before the player character. He uses a raven to communicate (just like Odin) and can possibly even be a shapeshifter, if the wolf you see throughout the journey is potentially him in disguise (note the wolf pelt that the Flute Player is wearing). He makes a departure from Odin by being somewhat young-looking and still having both of his eyes, so while elements are borrowed to help make connections, they are not one-to-one parallels.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: The Village Idiots' "pet worm" turns out to be a demon and is the final boss of the game. Its final form is a huge red dragon.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: But of course, from mosquitoes to moose.
• Exact Words: Shortly before fighting a horde of troll-spiders, the flute player earnestly promises you that this will be the last time you have to fight any living, air-breathing spiders in this world. The next three kinds of spider you fight are, respectively, spider-shaped undead monsters, underwater sea spiders, and located in another world entirely.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell: The door which the Village Idiots pet worm came through turns out to lead into one of these, complete with Big Red Devils.
• Floating Limbs: A weird variant, as the game is an FPS. The player character's limbs are detached past the elbows, making them just float there.
• Giant Spider: Almost something of a Mascot Mook for the game considering how many varieties there are.
• Gonk: Even good, helpful characters look like super creepy. And then you have the villains...
• Guide Dang It!: Getting the ballista near the end of the game requires you to find a certain amount of red potions hidden throughout the game.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Location names gradually get more overtly hostile as the game goes on, starting with the innocuous Deadwell and Greenslit and eventually reaching the accurately-described Drowned Veins and Hypothermia Waste.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Ballista is this, requiring the player to find at least 40 health upgrades and hitting things very hard, one-shotting the lategame mooks you'll be facing afterwards. Its overall unwieldiness keeps the weapon from being totally overpowered.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The Flute Player is one sardonic asshole, but he gives you good advice, praises you for your hard work, and dishes out supplies as you proceed through the journey. He's also the one who sunk your boat at the beginning of the game, but considering how losing the Dimensional Violators was a serious problem and he ends up paying you back in the end by giving you valuable treasure, it can at least be rationalized.
• Junkie Prophet: The Timewaster Seer will take a huge breath of smoke rising from his brazier and then tell you things that either already happened or which you can't prevent.
• Jump Scare: Sprinkled liberally throughout the game to keep you on your toes. Notable ones include your first meeting with the witches on the raft and the return visit to Deadwell where the demon woman escapes.
• Lampshade Hanging: After fighting yet another nest of spiders, the Flute Player will promise you that you will face no more living, air-breathing spiders after this point. Cue the skeletal and aquatic spiders.
• MacGuffin: The Dimensional Violators which the Flute Player keeps losing track of.
• Mood Whiplash: Used liberally, as Tropes Are Tools. The developer describes the game as being "happysad", which is a literal translation of the norwegian term Gladtrist. This term describes a work that oscilates between extreme cheerfulness and dire circumstances, which also happens in this game. One minute your traipsing around the woods or interacting with the funny locals, and the next you're battling terrifying supernatural monsters buried deep underground.
• Our Sirens Are Different: The Nokk seen in the page image lives in a big, deep lake and will try to physically pull the player character into the water with its song. When you dive into the pond later in the game using a diving bell you see that it is in fact a big cephalopod-like creature that always keeps its many tentacles below the waterline.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: The player character utters one before the final fight against the fully evolved Petworm on the tower:
  "Petworm, is that uncooked meat I see?"
• Save-Game Limits: A tooltip at the beginning of the game helpfully informs you that the game provides zero autosaves and only four manual save slots to rotate between. Where you can save is also harshly limited, letting you do it only on flat ground away from any NPCs.
• Shown Their Work: The range of giant invertebrates pitted against the player is truly impressive; alongside familiar fare such as spiders, centipedes and beetles are more obscure creatures such as pseudoscorpions and harvestmen.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Boss battles and large enemy encounters are well signposted by the large amounts of health and ammo pick-ups scattered around their arenas. Gets to comical levels in the second-to-last fight against Nidhogg, where the entire arena (a narrow walkway) is lined with health vials and spare bolts.
• Super Drowning Skills: The player character can't swim at all, so stepping into water that is below knee deep is a sure way to see the Game Over screen.
• The Unfought: Dnarg Dlihc is the only witch who doesn't attempt to kill you, instead merely rowing you into Darkthroat and confidently telling you how dangerous her mother is.
• The Time of Myths: A low-fantasy variant, but still. The game takes place in the far reaches of the northern parts of the Nordic countries during the Medieval Ages. As such, witches, trolls and other ghoulies still roam the lands.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: The only way to use the Exhumed Axes, Swords From Below, and Throwing Spears is to lob them at enemies. They do respectable damage, and benefit from fast reload animations as you simply pull another one out of your pockets.
• Underground Level: The player goes into underground caves and tunnels several times to fight trolls, beasts, or retrieve artifacts.
• Unique Enemy: The game boasts on the Steam store page that it has more than 50 unique enemy and boss types, and this is no exaggeration. Each zone has multiple encounters with completely unique enemies or bosses, each with their own methods of beating them.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The people of Deadwell do not seem to mind the many-eyed snakes or burrowing mole creatures that run around their village.
• Wham Line: The game ends with the player character rowing away from Deadwell in your repaired boat. The Flute Player tells them goodbye and says that if he needs help in the future, he'll sink their boat again.
• Wolfpack Boss: A good chunk of the boss fights are encounters against a small horde of powerful Mooks. Special mention goes to the five shield-wielding ghosts in Greenslit, who will dutifully only attack you solo or in pairs.