ASKA

Game seems fun until you realize the game main focus is on your followers, who have a stupid AI, where they will pick up stuff from one inventory, but not from other. So you have to learn how to cope with that, and in the end, you are always doing logistics, and end up with a neverending chaos. Until the followers AI is upgraded and fixed, this game feels like a chore rather than an enjoyable experience.

After 300 hours of playtime, I'd like to share my conclusions. The game truly deserves it. First of all, the game concept is absolutely brilliant. City building combined with survival. I've read many complaints about the NPC AI. I can't understand any of them. The NPCs do what you want, and if something doesn't work, you get a message telling you what's missing. There are just a few bugs, which are being corrected. What still bothers me, however, is that once you've mastered everything, the story doesn't progress. At some point, the invasions and attacks no longer pose a threat, and all the puzzles are solved. I've made some suggestions to the developers to keep the suspense alive. As an early access game, I absolutely recommend buying it. I'd even donate to this masterpiece.

An interesting take on the survival/craft/base-building genre. I've found the crafting, gathering and building to be more fun than I thought I would (after watching a few videos). And with how you can recruit and assign villagers to perform tasks for you, the game has alot of "base management" features which you don't generally find in craft/gather/build games. The game has a whole lot of tedium, with storage capacities and stack sizes far more limiting than I would generally like in any game....yet somehow, it all works. It isn't bothering me like it normally would and I'm oddly addicted to playing. For an Early Access title, it is also quite devoid of the normal bugs and glitches. At 60 hours of play I have only had a single, minor, bug affect me, which was resolved with a save and reload. I cannot wait to see what more is added to the game.

5* For the game, im loving it, if you enjoy medieval dynasty with ALOT of pvm this is the game for you. From time to time theres atacks from monsters and every winter theres a BIG atack that you either are prepared or you will have a bad time... I love it. And 5* For the dev team, i had a problem where my save file had problems, on discord i asked for help thinking it would be a lost cause but nop, a dev looked in to the problem and fixed it! I was so surprised by the fact that they actually took time of their day to help a single player, so its a 10/5 for me!!!

I bought this game on sale because I love survival games and my friends and I play them a lot. My favorites are Valheim, Empyrion, Conan (before the major change to the game) and 7 days to die (love that game). I've played about half a dozen survival games but this one is different. This game has a lot of potential. Lot of more work needs to be done. Do you like constantly searching for resources and trying to get your villagers to work properly? Do you like building a building of any kind using a three step time consuming process? Do you like searching the same POI over and over again. Then this is your game. So let me start by saying this is mainly a city building game. You look for resources to build your buildings and explore the 6 POI's. That's it. The 6 POI in the game are the 4 elemental bosses you must defeat. They're scattered around the map at random places and there are multiples of the same POI's. There is the spire which I'm not 100% sure what you get out of it except for killing the monsters around it and getting certain resources that you can get around the map. And the mines, Which are needed in order to obtain Iron. You need to hunt, fish and Forage for food which you absolutely need to do, But that's it for exploration and combat. There is an event where a wormhole opens up and starts counting down by days before an invasion strikes your village but I can't say that there's anything else. Building anything in this game requires a lot of time and resources. It becomes easier when you get more workers in your village to build and do things but the AI in this game is not good. I can't tell you how many times I've had villagers run up to me wave at me and tell me they need to do something but the material is right there literally next to them. At times I just grabbed the material myself, start to walk to the project and then the AI will realize the material is next to them grab the material themselves and finishing a project. Just frustrating! I'm not a big fan of the way buildings are done. I like the simplicity of games like Valheim and any of the dozen survival games I've played. Here's an example. Let's say you're going to build your first shelter. 1) First you have to level the ground. Then find the resources for the base of your shelter then you build the base. 2) Then you have to find the The materials for the framework of your shelter then you build the framework. 3) Then you need to find the resources for the final construction of your shelter and finish the shelter. Building anything is a 3 step process and it's long, tedious and it feels like work than fun. Again it does get easier when you get more villagers in to help out but still the AI isn't what you call smart. Combat is okay and can be challenging especially early on. But once you get iron and better equipment the challenges become relatively easy. The exceptions are the bosses. They can be a bit of a challenge. Lastly is multiplayer, my friends and I have been playing this game for a little over a week. And we have seen plenty of bugs that the devs are working on fixing. But the one game killing bug for me is the disconnect. If you disconnect from the main host whatever you have in your inventory before the save is lost. It is unbelievably frustrating to make new armor and mine ore to suddenly find yourself disconnected, then to reconnect and everything that you have on your person and inventory is gone and reverted to the last save. On top of that you lose all the resources that you collected or mined is permanently gone from the World. Apparently the game does not save your character stats and inventory unless the hosts manually saves or you wait for one of the two save points which is morning and evening game time. There is a way for the host to adjust the save times but the host has to remember or know about it. I'll end this rant by simply saying this game has a lot of potential. But more work needs to be done to make it fun and adventurous. It feels more like a real job than a game. Too much work goes into buildings and worker management then exploration and adventure. Maybe I'll look back into this game in six months and see what the devs have done. But right now I rather play Valheim and explore a world than spend 15 minutes building a tent.

Game with huge potential. I played it right after its launch and spent about 80hrs. Now, after one year I'm playing again and see some improvements and new things but game still needs a lot of development. A.I. is working better than year ago but strange things happens sometimes. Game is more newbie-friendly compared to it's earler versions. Right now it offers 80-120hrs of building your viking village. I wish there was more challanging enemies, exploration (like new islands with new enemies and materials to gather) and ofc much more buildings! If you like to manage a village, build, gather resouces like wood, stone etc. I recommend this game for you.

I would love to love this game. The graphics are fun, the idea is great. Its great fun to play. Have played for 14 hours so far. But the problem is the workers AI. Its like trying to manage a room of toddlers. The AIs in the old age of empires game were more intelligent. At least they didn't stand there and starve to death next to a full basket of food PLEASE PLEASE fix the workers and give a better tutorial. example I caught seabass, built a fire, shelter, BBQ. Assigned a worker to the bbq, gave him fish and a knife. He just sat there beside the fire for a day, As I said Im still playing the game, but not sure for how long.

This is a game I've been looking for. Its a lot like the game I love called "Banished" only you can also live in your village. Combat is not the focus but an element. This is more about recruiting and managing the needs of your town and people. You never run out of things to do. Its almost too many spinning plates and prevents most of your free will, forcing you to nudge progress forward before you get raiding by even bigger waves. But you don't get raided very often. My only complaints is I wish the starting biome had a bit more diversity graphically and torches fuel lasted a bit longer if not forever. I do not wanna play Torch Management 2025.

The AI is laughably stupid. Your villagers will starve to death while holding food in their inventory. There is the potential for a mediocre village management game here, but don't buy this looking for more than that.

early-stages are craft-building, base-building, while later stages are more village management and exploration/small force management (army management in small format). Overall great game, and has captured my interest for more than just a few hours.

It's extremely difficult and needs micro-management for everything. An awful lot depends on your game seed; how many resources you'll find and if you're attacked from the get-go. Tools break and food goes off. A seed can place you next to unusable assets with basic tools. Important basic resources can be behind wolves or wights. An uphill struggle from the start. But building a village is fun.

Decent game. I'm probably not going to play more until the game releases. There's unfortunately very little substance to the game, even a year after early access. I played during the demos before release, and while there's some progress on the management and building front, the game world, exploration, and combat still feel like they're the exact same. There's been no new lands to discover. No new biomes. No new enemies (as far as I can tell). You can build a boat, but there's no where to sail. You can explore the map, but there's nothing to see. It's still just really unfinished, even though they said they wanted to launch this year. It's not a bad game, and it has a very good foundation, but I wouldn't get it until there's a lot more content.

Hey guys, im wavering between recommend and not recommend. The game has great potential and a lot of the core mechanics are working fine. The building system is insane and easy understandable. You can upgrade literally everything in the game and has the possibility to build literally 50 buildings+. And every of this buildings has its unique usage. The delivery and construction worker are sometimes doing nothing and u dont know why. The descriptions of the problems that exists lack a lot of informations and that has to be fixed. But the biggest problem are the invasions. Let me be honest: "Nobody" wants to play without every invasion. But even if u activate the invasions at the lowest possible difficulty you are getting at a point you cant to anything against them. Today i had a save with 20 workers. And literally the second invasion included 15 enemies, 5 of the big draugr that receive 0 damage and 3 hit you. You need to find a balanced solution. In this way this is really antifun and just a waste of time. I would say this game is atm a 6/10 but without a recommendation with potential to be a 10/10 Greetings

tried with 3 friends. it feels really bad compared to other survival games. odd UI, tedious building, slow start..it needs a lot of work.

I can’t stop restarting. Every new map is a fresh excuse to obsess over the perfect village layout. What if I go farm first? What if I move the woodcutter closer to the spruce? What if I just… start again? ASKA feeds my need to optimize, but in a chill Viking way. It’s survival, colony sim, and a bit of chaos with mystical weirdness sprinkled in. Early game is a bit grindy, but when the village finally runs itself, it feels like magic (or at least Norse IKEA magic). Still early access, still janky sometimes, but I’m hooked. 10/10 would move my campfire again.

Great game, best with at least one other person

Good game but too easy. U can "beat" the game in like 10 hours if u speedrun. Bosses are easy asf.

ASKA is a more casual experience at this point than say, Soulmask. Very enjoyable and easy for an old and apparently fussy about his games person to get into. I've clearly gotten my $$$ worth with the hours I have into it already, so anything the devs do from here is a bonus.

Wife and I started this game together and we are both pretty dam hooked. It is fun and challenging enough to keep us occupied. only downside if I would have to say one is the villagers are dumb af and are a huge annoyance. but dam we are loving this game!

The game is really easy to get into, and is really fun. The optimization in the game is sadly very bad and there are bugs here and there, but i can only hope it gets fixed along the way :D

I was shocked at how well this all works, and how much fun it is. Really impressive colony sim blended with a survival/action game. So much fun played co-op too. Can't recommend this enough.

i may not understand some parts of the game still and get frustrated at times but really fun game none the less (im probably just dumb af) 10/10

Okay this one sucked me in, take some valheim vibes and throw in a bit of colony management so theres something to do with the viking inspired town you just built and you have Aska. And I say this in a good way not a bad way. But its not a pure survival crafting and its not a pure colony management game. Trying to play this as a pure survival crafting game or pure colony management is not gonna be fun, or sustainable past the first couple of events. So get that Jotun blood and expand your colony. Getting the pawns to make the interim crafting stuff to make armor and keep tools in storage is key, those numbers in the workshops are "make until x in storage" numbers. You can always move pawns around, leave one for a day on the cook top, bank up some food, next day throw them in the workshop for early on optimization when you have more shops than pawns. Have some pawns setup as non combat pawns, and have your militia people (set that on the eye of odin) be the ones that are out harvesting and whatnot. Get that farm down to get reeds and fiber coming in asap, so much easier and less "work effort" for you and your pawns to get the fiber that way. Then its easier to make some clothes for some minimal armor and temp protection. Then its just a bit of thatch harvesting for making more beds but no more thatch runs. Dont forget to drop the flags for wood harvesting, stone harvesting, foraging and buildings mats gathering so you pawns know where to harvest. Set an area for harvesting of what you want, also throw a flag for building materials, then go around and break up the stones and chop down the trees and let your pawns do the hauling work cause you can generally break things faster. Get a warehouse with some raw mat storage so you can have more of a buffer of that for rapid building expansion or repair needs. After the first winter you wanna rapidly build up to get 3 pawns training in the barracks and 3 in the archer for the next winter invasion. Like preferably have those building done by the end of the first winter. No need to surround the portal, theyll come to you, build a defensive spike wall 2 walls thick with some watch towers and hedge towers, and you should be able to tank it with the upper tier of leather armor on your pawns. After that first invasion swap out your pawns in the barracks and archer range to spread some of the combat training love. In terms of patrols you can either drop patrol flags or select watch towers as patrol points, you can also tell the patrol to hang out and train at archer/barracks place as part of their patrol. Rename your watch towers and hedge towers so you know which ones which. makes setting the patrols easier.

I recommend this with a gigantic caveat: this game isn't about fighting until you're done defending your base and teching up. This takes a LONG TIME (15-20 hours IRL and I never reached Iron) before you're going to even be able to think about fighting a boss or raiding something for loot. Be prepared for that before you dive in. ---------------- I do Logistics as part of my IRL job, so I figured this would be a good bit of fun... a game blending open-world survival and Banished-esque elements. Unfortunately, this game is a more logistics and survival than anything else. The main character can't do anything alone and is hopelessly outnumbered in any fight after the second Blood Moon. You can supplement the logistical process of your NPCs, but they're slow to act and inefficient in their movement [they pick up things one at a time and won't sprint while moving heavy items (big rocks, long sticks and logs)]. I spent 30 days in-game just making it through the winter to get a Blood Moon attack from no less than 12 Draugr and 4 Skeletal Warriors. I had a bear (it's a boss) mangle my base in a previous run on day 14. I died to Fenrir after clearing a wolf den, because why not spawn a boss after defeating the natural low-level threat to your outpost. You almost never get to participate in combat, and if you do, it's hilariously easy or you're outnumbered significantly. I just now shut the game off, moments ago, when the War Horn I used to rouse my villagers (it has a proximity aoe for some reason), caused them to mill about outside their houses and they didn't engage the Draugr mangling the base because I built my houses on the opposite side of the random invasion spawn. the TL;DR: Good: Fun Logistics game-play loop Feels good once you have sustainable food, water, and shelter Surviving that first brutal winter feels really good Methodical progression system (though sometimes ambiguous) Good value for the price point! Cons: You're useless alone, just another villager essentially Villager AI is clunky on the Logistics, but manageable Villager AI is absolutely brain damaged when things get real Cost to summon villagers is too high imho (only when you consider how many you need) When villagers go on break, they drop the stuff they're using for their current task. There was trash all over the village constantly. If you like logistics, you prolly have OCD. This bothered me really, really bad. Villagers want way too much free time for how slow they are when they're working Attacks are too frequent and ramp up too fast Seasons are too short The death penalty is really really bad, you shouldn't penalize the player that hard (lose skill points forever or KILL A VILLAGER) Once your supply lines start getting really long from exploiting the close proximity environs, the inefficiencies of the NPCs really start to hit hard. They really need to be able to use sleds/carts. An NPC moving a single heavy stone from far away takes an eternity. Durability of weapons and tools are too low when you factor in the cost to build them Cannot blacklist items from crafting use by other crafting stations. My toolmaker was constantly obliterating my bark. I don't want her to use the bark, I want her to use the flax that comes in periodically from farming. Once I made the weaver, It was a struggle to build anything with a bark-based roof. Having to physically walk to a location and build a marker (that has material costs no less) for Patrols, Gathering, etc. is unbelievably tedious. Let me set the gathering areas in the workstation itself without running all over the place. Limit it to what's been uncovered on the map if needs be. There's no way to set secondary or fall-back tasks, should primary tasks be complete. At the very least, have the villager default to builder when their gathering station is full, or they can't find more resources. Have the problem show up in the General Problems tab so I can address it without them talking up and bothering me all the time Can't disable the NPCs constantly waving at you. They're slow enough as it is, God forbid you get near one. They'll stop moving, wave then stand there drooling for a good 5 seconds before remembering what day it is. The game doesn't tell you who will process what resources. It took me three runs to figure out the Campfire Cooking job will process the fish and the large chunks of meat, but not until I set a task order for them in the fire itself. Would add information to the item tool-tip to help the player figure out how they can process a raw material.

Good base building game. Mechanics/UI are ok and still need some polish. I'm enjoying it now that I can understand the work flow.

This game is enjoyable. its nice to hop on and spend time cutting down trees after a long day at work. The advanced gamer would find the max UI capabilities enjoyable too. I find many of my friend (yes one) and family members asking to see what im doing; its nice to quickly switch modes and host the same village. If youre like me and are lucky enough to find a bug its nice to know that you can help get it addressed by the Devs.

I like it and it runs great on the Steam Deck. I played the initial demo and it ran very choppy, but just picked it up on sale and it runs very smooth. It's like Valheim and Rimworld had a good looking baby. I haven't really sunk my teeth into it yet, but running really great on the Steam Deck is a must for me so I want other Steam Deck users to see.

95% base building, HR and logistics management - 5% exploration and combat. To me the balance is way off from what I enjoy in survival crafting. However there's much potential if not for me then definitely for others whose fancy it tickles. First save I barely managed the first winter. Around came the second with a proper invasion and I, still learning what is what, got literally caught with pants in my ankles. 12 hours into the game for every villager getting killed and every building being razed in a matter minutes. All progress wiped. Nearly uninstalled. Not because it seemed too difficult but because it felt unfair. If you're going to have an event like that at least have a courtesy to warn the player about what is coming their way. Especially new players would 100% appreciate if the game would give some pointers on how to prepare for first winter and first invasion (other than "the gods will test you"). So I went back in with a new save knowing what to expect, so far about 120 in-game days passed. But I felt kinda sad because I know I'm not the only one with such a disastrous first run that almost made me uninstall the game right away. So many bad reviews could be avoided with a little guidance (yes, I would've liked to have a big text flashing in the middle of the screen that you can't fend off the winter invasion with a wooden club). After getting past the first struggles the game really is almost entirely about base and community development with a lot of good and some great features. Yes it's more or less rough around the edges which is understandable. After unlocking carpentry and smithing the manual crafting quickly turned out to be insanely meticulous. I counted 6 steps that it takes to craft an iron tool with each step containing multiple micro-steps. I guess that's OK if the purpose is to steer the player towards utilizing the villagers to automate the production which I eventually figured out how to do without losing the finite iron ore due to less than optimal use of villagers. However I love that the crafting steps make it look like the NPCs are actually working and not just randomly waving hands above workstations like in so many other crafting games. I would not recommend this to anyone who doesn't have extensive experience about the genre beforehand. Even to me it took some time to realize I have to drop the fish from the inventory in order to make a fillet from it with a knife so I could cook it by the campfire. And I really wish there was and option to disable the outhouse SFX... it stopped being funny after the first round.

Not as appealing to me as Enshrouded but I gave it a chance. Not bad...just need to polish it off. It's passable but not an absolute recommendation at this point.

Started out like a less lonely version of Valhiem. but with all the updates its heading strong in its own direction now

Very enjoyable game, lots of neat features and ideas. Rather then trying to explain why its a great game I would just say to play it and see for yourself. This should be a huge game when it fully releases and I cant wait to see the finished product.

excellent game, but some game breaking issues for now winter is too harsh and your villagers too stupid, so they will starve even if you have food, and as it was my first winter (which takes 14 hours in game to arrive) I did not know I could craft cloth, so it's game over, I am stuck in my house because I freeze after 30s, and I cannot regen stamina game will surely be awesome later once they fix these issues or let us more options to choose from to make it easier or harder!

If you like villagers who do actual jobs by themselves, this game is awesome for you.

Very enjoyable game, has a few issues, like ; fully loaded Carts dissapearing,.

Really good game, me and my bf really enjoy it. Have made 15 runs, each time we get the village running quicker and make it more efficient. Do recommend, specially together.

Your own viking village. Still in early access but there is a lot of stuff to do e.g. planing buildings, managing your villagers, gathering resources, crafting, cooking and fighting monsters.

Really good survival coop. It gets nice when you progress a bit. Def recommend it.

A good survival game and the loss after a death is a good comprise to make death something you do not want to happen but at the same time making it so you do not have to start over.

well put together and though out game, if you like to think about what your doing while your playing and are creative. things have a purpose which is great and the breaking down of items is awsome

epic for sure, but beware of winter cause my god, it's harsh! xD just be prepared, build a hunting hut cause your villagers can hunt and bring in meat (1 big meat = 4 small pieces) I'm learning how to farm, that requires alot of water so, keep that in mind, and not all things can be planted, some are seasonal.. my advice: - build hunting hut early on to cover food - try building your village close to a cave (if you keep spamming z and walk around the map you'll find a mountain that glows, that's a cave) - build multiple water sources so no one is thirsty - build storage as soon as possible for sticks, firewood, and bark. those fill up fast. Good luck and enjoy the game

i mean its almost like if valheim was more streamlined and had prefabs instead of building everything piece by piece, its a combination of survival and colony builder which almost makes survival easy

I've enjoyed the game greatly. Looking at other reviews, I do think it suffers a bit from Steam's "games like this" recommendations, so here's a bit about what the game is and isn't. Aska is first and foremost a city building / management game. It has way more in common with Banished than it does with Valheim. Your biggest enemy is time, as you are racing against the changes in seasons, harsh winters, and increasingly more punishing enemy assaults on your settlement. The biggest difference is the immersion. There really isn't a top-down view. All the normal city management struggles such as efficient pathing, production bottlenecks, etc. are seen from the perspective of being in the machine. You're also a participant in the village, which means you need resources (food, clothing, etc.) but also gives you the ability to resolve a lot of issues directly. Running out of raw food, go fish. Running out of wood, chop down some trees. If you've ever watched your town's population crater because you couldn't get people to move quickly enough to a critical production task, doing it yourself (and you're going to be way better at every job than your villagers) is an option to bridge that gap while you fix the balance. Like a lot of town/city managers, the AI can be painful. When there's just one or two going out hunting and preparing food so you can do other things, all is well. But as the village grows, the AI gets progressively dumber. Efficiency will fall way off as your cook stops making meals because their counter is full, but there's not enough there to feed everyone. A good logistics system becomes crucial to larger settlements with a lot of division of labor. That's not to say that there isn't a little adventure to be had wandering the countryside. When hoards or bears show up, you're going to get in there and bash heads. And there are bosses to be found in some of the points of interest, with some fancy loot drops. But your town is not likely to be just a set it and forget it place where you pick up fresh weapons and food. It's a town manager, and there's some micromanaging that's necessary for it to run smoothly, especially as it scales up. What it's not: it's not a free-form builder. There are options with regards to some extensions and the layout of your village, but the buildings themselves are pre-defined. It's not a typical survival game with a couple of NPC "helpers". You can try to do it all yourself, but cooperation is our main evolutionary advantage and the strength of adversaries will almost certainly ramp up faster than the abilities and gear of the one guy at the shallow end of the gene pool. Finally, it's Early Access. It is very playable (as my 250 hours can attest to), but it is decidedly not finished. There are and will be bugs. There are some significant balance issues. The NPCs can be particularly annoying and occasionally suicidal (though that's not unusual for a city management game). And some features and content are not there yet. With all of that said, the devs are definitely listening. We don't have to deal with the stumps our wood cutters were incapable of removing any more, thank Goddess. At the same time they seem to know what the game is going to be and aren't swinging at every pitch the players throw at them. In summary: this is a very creative and immersive take on the city builder/management genre. It has great potential, but it also stands really well on its own right now.

This should of been my type of game. But it wasn't. Building system is too complicated. UI is terrible. It's too bad I spent the time trying to get the hang of this game INSTEAD of getting a refund. Now I'm stuck with a game I'll never play.

i love the different playthroughs available. i also like that it is co-op if you wish.

ASKA is one of my new favourite games. Settlement/city builder with villager management is one of my favourite genres and would say anyone who loves those to give it a try. Only bad thing that I would say is having only 3 player co-op it less than ideal.

Good fun. Like how the game progresses. Bit of a grind at the start, but gets much better as you get into it.

great game with good potential in future , valheim like but harder to survive

A promising game, i'm having a lot of fun trying to survive and explore!

I'm not totally sure what it is about it but i LOVE this game. Management, settlement building, crafting, all parts are done well and it scratches so many itches for me. I've been gaming my whole life and this is by far the most satisfying game I've played of its type. Many games have had the potential but this one achieves. For probably the first time ever I've actually wanted to give them more money because the product is not disappointing. The updates so far have been FIRE and I cant wait to see what more they have in store for this one!

I am a big fan of this game, but somehow the development of it incredibly slow, so you have decide, if 20-30 hours of game-play worth its money then buy it, but you'll get a great unique atmosphere sim colony building game, with weak rpg combat system. I wouldn't even call it combat system as you slash slash dodge and thats about it. I am a bit confused why there isnt an end game, or some campaigns, a story or literally anything, You just build, create your village aaaand basically thats it. Lots of self learning as the tutorial is also kind of non-existent. No real magic or mystery also in the island sooooo yeah, decide it for yourself. I really enjoyed it nonetheless hence the positive recommendation, but quality of life update is long overdue, and a thing as tree regrown, the community had to wait for a year..