Recent reviews by Wardka

Let's get this out of the way first - Skald isn't perfect. There are bugs, there are typos, there are imbalanced classes and imbalanced encounters.

None of that matters! Skald is a joy to play and a brilliant combination of retro game design with a modernized approach to not wasting the player's time. The writing is fantastic. The pixel art is stunning. The soundtrack perfectly conveys the somber mood.

At €15, this game is a steal. Play it!

First of all - the gameplay is fine. It's not a traditional XCOM game, but the bite-sized breaches are tactically interesting anyway. It's a bit like what I'd expect from a good mobile port of XCOM.

Gameplay isn't everything, however. They've taken the XCOM universe and turned it into... what, exactly? I'm not sure. It's somewhere between a fan fiction parody of the main games and a Saturday morning cartoon. All the buildup from the main series about the aliens being bio-engineered horrors is thrown out the window - in this game they're just humans with different skins. Sectoids are quirky humans with mind powers. Mutons are humans with a gruff voice. Vipers are humans with a cruel sense of humor. They act, sound and behave the same way humans do. All semblance of the ENEMY UNKNOWN from the main series is gone.

As if that wasn't enough to ruin the atmosphere of XCOM, the set squad members are all terrible. They're clearly written to resemble the heroes from Overwatch, but they lack all the charm of that game, relying on corny quirky jokes to get their shallow personalities across. And because they exist, the option to create our own squad members as well as the risk of permadeath have been completely removed, further diluting the XCOM atmosphere.

If the game had doubled down on the cartoony light-hearted aspects as a spinoff to the main series it'd have been fine - not terrible, not great. Instead it tries to have its cake and eat it by telling a serious story about a terrorist threat to a city, a choice that doesn't work at all because of how the ridiculous squad members you're stuck with try to make a joke out of everything.

At $9.99, the game was fairly priced for what it was. I really can't recommend it to fans of XCOM, though.

An amazingly cozy game made by a studio of one. This one is a true labor of love, and it shows.

Edit Dec '19: And it keeps getting updated! Still worth it!

It's worth it.

Amazing game even out of the box, and the plethora of mods and the upcoming expansion just adds to the enjoyment. Perfect mix of frustration and "just one more try..."