ASKA Reviews

I wish there was a middle ground between like and dislike because I'm really in the middle but cannot give positive feedback because of game breaking bugs. Positives; -As a survival crafting game, it passes all the criterias. -I played 3 games and improved my play style and learned new mechanics in every game. -Atmosphere is nice. Viking theme is something that I always enjoyed. -It is fun. Improvement areas; -AI is good but still needs improvement. They throw valuable items on the ground very often. They don't priotise the pinned builds and go rogue on other builds. -Stacking happiness decrease bug made me quit in my 2 games. Impossible to make my villagers happy and they leave eventually. -Banner system is very workload intensive. For example; I need crafting materials for every banner for my production and have to go there and put it. I should be able to move a banner on world map at least in areas I discovered. -Some recourses should be spawn very often. -After chopping down a tree, you see a fir sapling. You can either chop it for firewood, or leave it. After leaving it, it does not regrow. It should. -Ranged combat is very underwhelming (not AI, player only. AI is powerfull enough). It needs an improvement. -Militia, defence abilities, patrol system, how to survive blood moon kind of tutorials would be very usefull. at least for your first blood moon. I learnt it the hard way. -In late game, micro managing villagers is painfull. There should be a macro managing system. -I could not find a way to remove an extenstion from warehouse e.g.: remove stick depot and put a bark depot. I'm still enjoying the game. Devs are very open to feedback and improving their game very often. I'm sure they will address many of the issues I highlighted above. However, happiness decrease debuff is stacking and it is game breaking. Therefore, I'm giving a negative feedback. I will change it in the future if they address it.

The Positive The game is beautiful. The Conflicted I simultaneously like and dislike the construction / building of the bases. What I do like is the level of depth. What I dislike is the sheer amount of work that goes into maintaining a base. I feel these systems to maintain things working should be more intuitive. It's just "not fun" right now, but could be. When NPC's come to the camp, I feel like they shoul dbe a little smarter than they are when some hurdles present. I feel like too much micro is required on 'day to day' operations. Since this is comparable to Valheim, I would like to say I enjoy the entirety of Valheim;s base building, repair and upgrading system. There is a proper mix of building, gathering and repair (you don't need to regather materials to repair unlike Aska). In short, it feels really grindy to build in Aska and this is the largest negative at the moment for me. Instead of spending time in a creative perspective, most time is spent running crazy to get materials for the work.

This game is the perfect example of a developer suffering from shiny object syndrome. Every feature feels like its 10-20% done and the devs have moved onto a new feature or something else. Example. The literal tooltip says 88% of buildings aren't enclosed in a wall... so you build a wall... does nothing to reduce the % ..instead its watch towers... just wtf I'd sit the developer down and make them at least finish 80% of a feature before letting them code / work on another one. As these are all death by a "fk this i'm out" cuts.

- Needs better balance (!) - Needs the ability to modify terrain (e.g., removing stone objects). - Villagers' perks need clearer descriptions (some look different, but their descriptions are nearly identical, and their actual effects are unclear, forcing players to test and guess). - Needs more tools to protect the village, such as defensive structures and improved AI for villagers (they should actively move to attack enemies instead of waiting until they are within range). - I also have a strange feeling that the male character (Ragnar) gets hungry faster than the female character (ASKA)? - Maybe introduce numerical values to stats and perks to make them clearer and easier to understand. I love how smelting works, it's absolutely GOLD! Multiplayer co-op works well. I believe increasing the maximum player count to 4-6 + is both possible and necessary.

Great game that the devs put just enough struggle balance in. There are multiple great quality of life functions to make the grind not seem so grindy like in other games. Not sure if this game has an end game yet or not but even if there is I can see myself doing multiple runs of this game.

Unfortunately not as good as it reads. Extremely tiring to play with a lot of imho bad design decisions that stretch the game experience. Best example: Picking up items one by one (!) and laboriously and fiddly from the ground. Worst of all: the annoying tutorial wisp. After just 2.5 hours I was tired of it, I rarely have that in a game and I like to fumble my way through something. I'd much rather play the somewhat similar Bellwright, which also looks much better graphically. I know it's a matter of taste, but I get a headache very quickly when playing Askia, even though it runs quite smoothly for me. The whole thing has very little to do with Valheim, even if the setting is similar. Overall, unfortunately, a weak gaming experience for me, Maybe I'll take another look in a year, because the potential is definitely there. 4/10

"I love this game—maybe even better than Valheim... just maybe. I miss building my base piece by piece, yet somehow, I’m relieved that I don’t need to do that anymore. It’s amazing to put people to work, go exploring, and discover instead gathering, farming, and foraging after 113,548,783 years. But… BUT… where are the chests? It’s a crafting game—I need a chest! A basic chest, a chest that I can place anywhere, in the middle of the base, in the forest. I love how I need to micromanage every building, item, and storage, but you can’t have a crafting game without the ability to place a chest. A basic chest for whatever, right in the middle of the base. Please, devs, let us use basic chests!"

very underwhelming game, as other reviews said, its just collecting small nodes of resources, to build and repair buildings to go and collect more small nodes of resources. outside of that, the tutorials are not very good, the UI feels clunky and confusing, the building system needs work, combat isn't fun, when it's even there. overall just leave this to cook for awhile more, its a beautiful looking game, and I'm sure there's something here for some folks, but this was really a let down. Nothing but a Hold "R" sim to me as of right now.

I enjoy the co-op feature. I have enjoyed building a village with my husband and daughter. Our first steps into the game were a series of comedic errors because we had no clue what we were doing but it was great fun learning and figuring it out. Our largest village had reached iron production and markets. With this new content update we are looking forward to starting a new village, possibly a fishing village? Decisions, decisions! So many to make and there are endless varieties of ways to create your very own village and outpost! The season changes are great as they bring new challenges for you to figure out. During winter is is a race to keep your villagers stocked with fuel for their hearths, spring is a time of planting crops, fishing, and hunting. Summer season you must be sure to check that your crops will grow, and there are new vegi's to forage. I wish there were other fruits besides berries. Apple and maybe cherry trees would be a nice addition so you could make apple pie or cherry pie. Wild strawberries would be neat! You could make jam like you do with the blue berries! There was really very little that I did not like. The villagers sit in the middle of the cottages when they are not sleeping and it blocks the way when trying to fill their fireplaces with fuel. The villagers also will just drop whatever they are carrying ad leave it behind when it is time to rest. I have come across long sticks and logs in random places where no trees have been cut down. It is also odd to come across a long stick, log, or even sticks standing straight up on their end in the middle of the woods or even on a road. Over all, I really enjoy this game. it is visually appealing, and technically challenging for me.I would definitely recommend it!

I adore this game and it's only going to get better. You're basically a viking man/woman (male better a physical combat and mining/woodcutting, female better at ranged/gathering) and you have to build up a village whilst defending from increasing waves of monsters (can turn this feature off thankfully and just leave monsters out in the wilds). Game's VERY slowed paced so don't expect to have a big town for a good while. AI villagers help speed stuff up though currently, they do need a bit of babysitting still. There's always something to do though. Really good updates and there's usually a major one every month. Have a look at the news section and see the great updates they've done since launch. I'd like to see more player settings added though similar to the world ones. I'm not one for equipment that breaks, annoys me beyond belief, so I'd love options to have unlimited durability on equipment. The game does try and sell itself a Viking/Norse themed game, but I don't 100% get that vibe. It's more a pesudo-tribal town builder with a hint of Norse mythology thrown in. Buildings don't look very pre-Christian Nordic if I'm honest and more like makeshift wooden things currently. Maybe they'll do a building aesthetic overall one day. Really relaxing game.