2014 - Messhof - PC
Nidhogg is what would happen if you took a fencing game, a tug-of-war game, and Towerfall and blended them all together. It's got the positioning and strategy of fencing, the back and forth momentum swings of tug-of-war, and the frenzied pace of Towerfall. Just like Ken Griffey Jr., it's a great game to check out if you and a friend want a quick laugh and to yell obscenities at each other while playing a fun game.
The basic goal of Nidhogg is to get from one end of the screen to the other. There are always two players, yellow and orange. The yellow player wants to move to the right, and the orange player wants to move to the left. But in order to progress to the left or right, your player has to have control of the camera. The game will always begin in a neutral position. The camera is initially in a fixed position and camera control is rewarded to the first player who gets a kill. You can kill an opponent by stabbing them with your sword, throwing your sword at them, snapping their neck while they're knocked down, or by pushing your opponent into a stage hazard. As soon as you get control of the camera, you'll want to frantically run to the left or right, depending on which color player you are. But your opponent will be constantly respawning in your path to try and kill you, take control of the camera and push back in the opposite direction. Once you reach the end of the stage, you win, and are rewarded by being eaten by the giant flying worm known as the Nidhogg. Yeah.
The pace of the game is very fast, and matches will usually last under a minute or two. Even though battles with your opponent happen very quickly, there's a little bit of rock-paper-scissors strategy with each encounter. You can approach traditionally with your sword, go in high for a divekick, or go in low and try to sweep the leg and snap the neck. There are also three fencing elevations you can hold your sword: low medium and high. Holding your sword low will protect against leg sweeps, but leave you open to divekicks and sword throws. Holding your sword high will protect against sword throws, but leave you open to leg sweeps. If you get disarmed or throw your sword, you will be able to run faster, but you will have fewer options. You can only attack with divekicks or leg sweeps, so often the best option is to just try to jump over your opponent. You can try to strategically analyze each of these options and try to predict what your opponent will do, but everything happens so quickly that you barely have time to think before one of you is already dead. You never really get a sense of negative punishment though, the quick respawning and fast pace of the game will only allow you to shout one quick profane phrase at your opponent before you're right back in the game to try again.
The art style and music perfectly complement the gameplay of Nidhogg. There are four playable stages and each have frenetic and constantly changing background artwork. The artwork really serves to highlight the frantic and urgent pace of the gameplay. Same with the soundtrack. Most of the songs in the soundtrack have an eerie synthesized sound accompanied by an unpredictable and wild drum track. It really is the gameplay expressed through music. Each time a character dies, they explode into puddle of orange or yellow paint which flies all over the level at the point at which a character was killed. If you really get a deadlock where each player keeps pushing back and forth at the same position, you get a crazy looking orange and yellow bloodbath. It's pretty cool looking. The pixelated animations of the character models are great too. Some of the death animations are especially funny and they're accompanied by great over-exaggerated death screams. Great example of simple but awesome design in the audio/visuals
Nidhogg is an excellent example of a great game that will probably only ever get made in the indie space. The elevator pitch for this game is way too insane to be taken seriously by an executive and the scope of the game is too small for a large company to bother spending resources developing it. I'm really happy that there's a huge boom of really interesting and creative ideas coming from all of these amazing indie games like Nidhogg right now.
Summary:
Nidhogg is a weird, fast and crazy good time if you and a friend are looking for a game to play. There's even a bunch of crazy bonus setting like low gravity mode or hyper-speed mode you can toggle in the settings if you get tired of the basic game. The scope of Nidhogg is small, but the gameplay is good and the replay value is high. I'd recommend checking it out.
The basic goal of Nidhogg is to get from one end of the screen to the other. There are always two players, yellow and orange. The yellow player wants to move to the right, and the orange player wants to move to the left. But in order to progress to the left or right, your player has to have control of the camera. The game will always begin in a neutral position. The camera is initially in a fixed position and camera control is rewarded to the first player who gets a kill. You can kill an opponent by stabbing them with your sword, throwing your sword at them, snapping their neck while they're knocked down, or by pushing your opponent into a stage hazard. As soon as you get control of the camera, you'll want to frantically run to the left or right, depending on which color player you are. But your opponent will be constantly respawning in your path to try and kill you, take control of the camera and push back in the opposite direction. Once you reach the end of the stage, you win, and are rewarded by being eaten by the giant flying worm known as the Nidhogg. Yeah.
The pace of the game is very fast, and matches will usually last under a minute or two. Even though battles with your opponent happen very quickly, there's a little bit of rock-paper-scissors strategy with each encounter. You can approach traditionally with your sword, go in high for a divekick, or go in low and try to sweep the leg and snap the neck. There are also three fencing elevations you can hold your sword: low medium and high. Holding your sword low will protect against leg sweeps, but leave you open to divekicks and sword throws. Holding your sword high will protect against sword throws, but leave you open to leg sweeps. If you get disarmed or throw your sword, you will be able to run faster, but you will have fewer options. You can only attack with divekicks or leg sweeps, so often the best option is to just try to jump over your opponent. You can try to strategically analyze each of these options and try to predict what your opponent will do, but everything happens so quickly that you barely have time to think before one of you is already dead. You never really get a sense of negative punishment though, the quick respawning and fast pace of the game will only allow you to shout one quick profane phrase at your opponent before you're right back in the game to try again.
The art style and music perfectly complement the gameplay of Nidhogg. There are four playable stages and each have frenetic and constantly changing background artwork. The artwork really serves to highlight the frantic and urgent pace of the gameplay. Same with the soundtrack. Most of the songs in the soundtrack have an eerie synthesized sound accompanied by an unpredictable and wild drum track. It really is the gameplay expressed through music. Each time a character dies, they explode into puddle of orange or yellow paint which flies all over the level at the point at which a character was killed. If you really get a deadlock where each player keeps pushing back and forth at the same position, you get a crazy looking orange and yellow bloodbath. It's pretty cool looking. The pixelated animations of the character models are great too. Some of the death animations are especially funny and they're accompanied by great over-exaggerated death screams. Great example of simple but awesome design in the audio/visuals
Nidhogg is an excellent example of a great game that will probably only ever get made in the indie space. The elevator pitch for this game is way too insane to be taken seriously by an executive and the scope of the game is too small for a large company to bother spending resources developing it. I'm really happy that there's a huge boom of really interesting and creative ideas coming from all of these amazing indie games like Nidhogg right now.
Summary:
Nidhogg is a weird, fast and crazy good time if you and a friend are looking for a game to play. There's even a bunch of crazy bonus setting like low gravity mode or hyper-speed mode you can toggle in the settings if you get tired of the basic game. The scope of Nidhogg is small, but the gameplay is good and the replay value is high. I'd recommend checking it out.
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