Early Demo Preview: Sons of Valhalla

There are a lot of demos for games we are gearing up to start trying during the upcoming Next Fest, but this one wasn't on my list initially. Now, I am beating myself up over not finding Sons of Valhalla sooner. I am so glad I did though because I absolutely LOVE the concept behind this game.

Developed by Pixel Chest and published by Hooded Horse, Sons of Valhalla is a 2D combat and base-building game that's set during the Viking era. As Thorald Olavson, you are tasked to track down the Jarl that took your beloved and fled to England. Back from the dead, you must build up your headquarters, manage your resources, and train your soldiers to take over enemy fortresses as you gain more resources to grow more and more.

Sons of Valhalla - Impressions

The demo begins with you waking up in Valhalla face to face with Odin. From there, you are brought back to life and start learning the core mechanics of building and fighting. In your fortress, you start off with the Mead Hall, which acts as your main base of operations. Upgrading this allows you to build more sub-buildings like a fishing or woodcutting tent for resources, barracks and siege workshops to produce and enhance units to help defend, and a smithy to upgrade your own personal abilities.

Controlling your character, you will be able to use different tools like bow and arrows, as well as your own trusty sword. With the ability to issue commands to your units like following you, retreating, attacking, or holding position, you will start a tug of war against the enemy as you both fight to retain control of the buildings in the field. You will also pick up runes to augment your abilities, giving you more health, bleed chance, stamina, and more, while you attack and dodge your way to victory. Be careful though, since when you die, you have to give up a rune to come back to life and continue where you left off.

Personally, I absolutely love games with this gameplay cycle and I feel Sons of Valhalla does it quite well so far. Managing your economy, building enough units, and choosing how to utilize them is increasingly important in this game as one false move can eliminate your army even with numbers on your side. On top of that, the visuals look stunning and, overall, I loved what was shown so far and felt very confident in what the final product will be. Sons of Valhalla will definitely be a game I am watching out for.

Steam Deck Performance

This is where the game gets a bit tricky. While it doesn't seem performance heavy, Sons of Valhalla does have some limitations internally that seem to stop it from performing above expectations. Without any caps from SteamOS, the game regularly falls below 44 FPS when not moving and can drop even further when moving around in some areas. I decided to use a 30 FPS cap, but even that could sometimes dip to the high 20s when around burning buildings.

It is a little disappointing, seeing as how I feel it should run better, but 30 FPS is playable even with the drops. Since the framerate was low, I didn't feel the drops effect as much. The demo also supports gamepad controls, and a native 1280x800 resolution (changing resolution didn't affect performance). To make sure the game didn't drain as much, I also set a TDP limit of 9. There were more drops here, but kept battery drain below 17W.

With some optimization, I believe Sons of Valhalla can be an essential game on the Steam Deck. Gameplay and content wise, this has been one of my favorite demos I have played so far. It does have a little bit to go for a great experience on Deck, but with this being so early and just a slice of the full game, I have a good feeling it will improve.

You will be able to play this game during Next Fest starting tomorrow!

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