Volgar the Viking

Everyone knows that vikings are the coolest. Ninjas are a cowardly lot who would never win a fair fight, and pirates are a bunch of scurvy ridden sailors who mutiny at the drop of a hat. Unfortunately the last time I dusted off the old ridiculously huge axe to rape and pillage a local village I received 5-10 years at my local penitentiary. So I must turn to video games to perpetuate my nonexistent viking heritage with Volgarr the Viking.


Volgarr the Viking is a 2d action platformer in which you play Volgarr a large muscular viking who must have put all of his ability points into strength, because he drops his weapons, and armor whenever he gets hit. The game is heavily influenced by castlevania, and I don't mean that in the metroidvania kind of sentiment that finds its way into just about every game critics vocabulary like certain other buzzwords such as ludonarrative dissonace or rougelike. Volgarr takes several mechanics from the original castlevania like, not being able to adjust your movement while you are in the air, knockback when you get hit that will force you into instant death pits, the ballsmashingly hard difficulty, and even fake walls you can find with powerups.

The way jumping works in Volgarr makes seemingly simple jumps like this one into a challenge to navigate

Volgarr escapes the shadow of its forbearer and comes into its own in a these main ways. Volgarr throws spears that will stick to walls and create platforms, which is vital to progression in the game, and allows for the access of secret areas. Furthermore the game has a powerup system similar to super mario, collecting chests will allow you to gain weapons and armor like a steel shield or a flaming sword that you will lose upon getting hit. The game also has 5 varied areas that are filled with unique enemies followed by a gauntlet of a final area that throws all of the different enemies at you in new headache inducing ways.

Your shield is an important survival tool, unfortunately one hit will cause you to lose it

Volgarr starts immediately after you boot the game up, a screen with the norse god odin greets you. "Arise!" booms a deep voice, and you start on you adventure. This is a screen you will be seeing a lot. Every time you exit the game you start from here. However, every time you beat a world you can skip it by walking to the left, but that requires you fight through 2 levels and a boss fight. So at its heart Volgarr is a game about memorization, Memorization of levels, and enemies patterns and how to deal with them, because Volgarr is a difficult game. In my case it is a game that I slowly chipped away at learning the levels well enough to reliably beat them and progress further and further until I completed the game.

Me getting knocked into the fire of instant BBQ for your own amusement

I had fun with Volgarr, it is an entertaining game that manages to remain uniquely challenging. The only real complaint I have is that I found the bossfights to be underwhelming and the fact that I sometimes would have trouble motivating myself to fight trough 2 levels just to get back to a boss I couldn't beat last session. But don't let that turn you away from a great game Volgarr the Viking is a worthwhile experience for anyone who loves platformers.