Bad North:Jotunn Edition

Bad North:Jotunn Edition Bad North: Jotunn Edition is a roguelite war strategy where you lead a tribe to defend a procedurally generated island from Viking attacks. Control AI fighters, protect burning houses, earn coins, and upgrade commanders.

Bad North: Jotunn Edition

Bad North: Jotunn Edition is a war strategy game with roguelite elements. You play as a tribe leader tasked with steering your people to defend their island kingdom from Viking invasions. Each island is randomly generated, with its own layout and terrain, so you must choose your deployments carefully based on the ground and the direction the Vikings attack.

Your fighters are handled by smart AI, which helps reduce the burden on you. In practice, you give commands while your troops react to the situation and fight accordingly. As you progress, you can upgrade your people, gradually turning them into more battle-ready warriors and strengthening your defensive advantage.

Gameplay

Bad North centers on real-time tactics. Your primary objectives are to protect your kingdom after the Vikings kill the king and to guide the islanders to evacuation.

Islands are built from multiple tiles and include houses. Vikings can attack from any corner, meaning your plan needs to account for where the threat will enter and how your units will cover the area.

During raids, Viking invaders may throw torches into houses. If a house burns completely, you will not earn coins for that house. Coins are used to purchase unit upgrades and to improve commander defenses.

You can also find items on the map (shown as question marks) and use them to bring new commanders into your forces.

Difficulty

• Easy
• Normal
• Hard

A Very Hard difficulty can be unlocked by finishing the game on Hard.

Jotunn Edition is a free expansion for Bad North, released in July 2019.

Features

The biggest draw of Bad North: Jotunn Edition is its endless replayability. This comes from the leveling progression, the scale of battles, and how the game builds islands with isolated, tricky terrain and lots of defensive choke points.

Player actions heavily shape each battle. Even the enemy can switch tactics unpredictably, creating moments of surprise during an attack. While the gameplay strongly encourages defensive play, it still demands judgment and skill—especially on harder waves and more complex terrain.

Adapting to changing maps

Different terrain types let you play more creatively and stay flexible. After each map reset, however, the Vikings may arrive from a different direction. You can pause the action and inspect the battlefield from multiple angles of the island, then plan your next tactical moves before resuming.

On the surface, it’s straightforward: tap units and send them to specific positions. Under the hood, the depth stays high because each army encounter includes random factors that can influence the outcome. Each unit also serves a distinct role, and stacking the right combinations can improve performance across campaigns.

Units and progression

Unit variety is a key strength. Many abilities become stronger depending on the terrain and the unit’s placement. The trade-off is that you can’t simply spawn unlimited additional units—you must win each island using the troops you have available.

Over time, armies will upgrade automatically, improving their overall power and changing their effectiveness. Special skills and support equipment are also commonly brought into play, and smart use of terrain can lead to major combat advantages. One standout capability is that units can be healed in multiple ways, which is especially valuable when wave after wave keeps pressing your defenses.

Strategies

Defend more than the houses—hold the coastline

Each battle offers a chance to earn gold for upgrades as long as the island’s houses survive. To reach the end of the game, you want to collect as much money as possible, but that doesn’t mean you should only place troops near houses.

In many cases, it’s better to use your forces to defend the whole island. Enemies traveling on foot can be hard to predict since they can move freely. But once they arrive by boat, you can often surround them and control their movement so they’re forced into less favorable routes.

Fighting along the shore also brings an advantage: you can push enemies back into the water, and doing so will instantly kill them.

Use near-constant slow motion

Whenever you issue a command, the game slows down dramatically. Take advantage of this by selecting units (even if you don’t immediately move them) to watch the fight unfold step by step, then react to new developments while time is stretched.

The risk is that you may eventually need to issue a command that speeds things back up—possibly at the wrong moment. (If you want, paste the rest of the page content and I’ll finish rewriting the remaining strategy section.)