Game Review – Dead in Vinland
dead in finland after a prologue
describing their exile you begin with
four characters who are shipwrecked on a
mysterious island
they’re a norse family eric bludued his
wife
kari their daughter and moira who’s the
sister of bloodwed
you only semi control these people
though this is because
dead in finland is a cross between a
survival game and a visual novel
the survival game happens during the day
and the visual novel happens
at night during the daytime the player’s
job is to keep them alive
this involves exploring gathering
resources and working on paying tributes
to the big bad because
otherwise if he gets angry enough then
he’ll kill everybody
during the night you feed and water them
but otherwise you have very little
control they’ll either talk or randomly
do things on their own
sometimes there are dialogue options
with choices for the player but
for the most part there’s nothing for
the player to do but watch them interact
they’ll argue exhaust themselves or do
something else with no input
from the player and this can be bad if
they for example
depress themselves to death which
conversations happen
which night
means that their stat affecting events
are randomized too
a rough night can kill why these
conversations happen varies
sometimes it’s just character
development banter to portray their
personalities
other times it’s meant to reveal a part
of a unique subplot
every character has at least one story
subplot that’s unique to them
for example bloodwed has several one
with her own self-confidence
one with her sister one with her husband
and one with her daughter whether or not
she and her relationships blossom
depends on if the player picks the right
choices in the nightly visual novel
as you explore the island 10 more
companions can be found
and each also have their own substories
if you build up the shelter enough then
you can invite in
up to six of them and each person will
interact with the core four
and will also have their own subplots
that unfold during the night
these characters are scattered randomly
on the map and so who you find where
and when varies though some do come in
sets of two
the story and the characters a big
problem with dead in finland is that all
of the characters stories can end
stupidly once you beat the big bad any
unresolved interactions
just stop the only way to finish them
would be to stall the final battle
it also just makes no sense in game and
the more characters you’ve recruited
the worse this stunted ending is for
example moira
ludawad’s sister is a witch one of the
additional companions gudrun is also a
witch
i found goodrin while exploring and she
mentioned that she wanted an apprentice
i decided to let
moira learn from goodrun and it was
going well but then i beat the big bad
and so the apprenticeship never finished
that made no sense in game either
after all beating him gave moira and
guran a better life
they were no longer under intense
pressure from the big bad to spend all
of their time
slaving away gathering resources as
tribute for him
they had to do that if they didn’t then
he’d have killed them
now not having to serve him gave them
lots of free time
which they could spend doing training so
this meant that everything
grinding to a halt after his death was
nonsense their lives should have
improved not
just paused the ending also doesn’t make
sense in many other ways
i won’t spoil their endings but here’s
another example
shanna and kari can become friends and i
chose options that had them acknowledge
each other as sisters
shanna was also welcomed by the group
and was well liked
why then would kari need to sneak off to
see her
also if kari really became bland and
obedient
then why would she go on hunting trips
and sneak around to see people in the
woods
it was all very inconsistent nonsense
either maybe she has a reason for
sneaking off to see chana or she’s
actually bland and obedient and wouldn’t
combining kari’s different options and
how she can turn out happened here
and it didn’t make sense i think that
the reason behind these lame endings
is due to one very simple problem the
game can’t handle its own design
if you play well and recruit many
characters then it has problems
only a couple of interactions can happen
each night so
if you have many characters recruited
then the game won’t have time to finish
most of their stories
there are too many interactions to fit
in and the game doesn’t process
that sensibly instead of doing something
logical such as a final conversation
after the battle to finish off the
visual novel portion of a character’s
story
it just sputters out and this was not
only bad design
but it also felt like a punishment for
playing well it’s difficult to build the
necessary stations up enough to support
a large amount of people the shelter
requires materials building up the
necessary water reserves
also requires materials having enough
food is also a chore
and each character also needs to be
closely monitored or else they’ll die of
sickness fatigue or something else
then the reward for handling all of that
is for the game not to finish their
stories because there’s just not enough
screen time for all of them
there are also other major plot points
which don’t make sense
too for example this one’s a cross
between poor story and poor gameplay
a puzzle with a blue woman the core four
are a norse family they know norse
mythology and when a related situation
comes up
then wisdom checks will often let the
players see if these people can remember
what they know
when the puzzle with the blue woman
comes up then there’s no wisdom check to
remember who she is
they should know too i mean she’s a big
woman with cats
kind of stands out but unless the player
metagames and either looks up the answer
online or knows
norse mythology offhand then this puzzle
would take up to 27 guesses to solve
there is no way to find the information
in game for this puzzle there are no
in-game clues
worse yet the game indicates that there
are clues defined somewhere
and there aren’t guessing also isn’t
free a wrong guess
penalizes the player’s chosen character
which means that
guessing until you get it right not
exactly sensible
i was baffled by this design choice and
i wondered what the reasoning behind it
was
i found fans defending it on forums they
were saying that those who knew norse
mythology would think it was an easy
question and that players should have
expected norse mythology to be in a game
about
norse people and okay sure but then why
wouldn’t the
norse people know it themselves if it’s
an easy thing to know
why is that on the player why couldn’t
there be a wisdom check
just like there was with other puzzles i
found the lack of an in-game solution to
be rather broken
and lame from a story perspective the
gameplay
the gameplay had many problems at its
core it’s a coin
toss game almost everything’s a coin
toss
the narrative idea behind this seems to
be about the variability of fate
however this mechanic makes dead in
finland more of a gambling game than
anything else everything’s up to luck
and there’s
little strategy even if you plan well
then that’s no guarantee of success
whether or not you can complete a series
of challenges is luck
and a high skill level doesn’t guarantee
success
whether or not your ranged fighters
start out in the range row is luck
because you can’t set down any tactical
maneuvers before a fight begins
similarly whether or not enough hits
land to cause wounds is also luck
and then whether or not a healing item
can heal those wounds
is luck even how much food will say
hunger is a coin toss
for instance cheese will state hunger
anywhere between five to fifteen percent
which is a rather
large margin and pretty weird i mean
imagine if you ate a burger and
sometimes you only felt a third as full
as you usually did it’s weird and this
sort of variability applies to every
food item they’re not
consistently filling and all in all this
variability was frustrating to me i
didn’t enjoy the mechanic because
things often went either wildly in my
favor or not
regardless of what i did this meant that
i didn’t feel like i was playing a game
because the results for almost
everything were random regardless of my
input
my input as a player just didn’t matter
instead of feeling like i was making
choices
i felt like i was spinning a wheel and
seeing what the clicker landed on
over and over again and to a degree
there’s realism in that i get that in
real life whether or not you succeed at
a task is often luck
even the best pro athletes out there
have bad days it makes sense that
not every arrow hits its mark not every
test is passed
yet i think that the game took this way
too far when someone is highly skilled
then while bad days can
happen wild swings of luck are not
common identical meals should be
identically saving because calories are
a measured unit
it’s not about how full someone feels
when eating has become a question of
survival rather than mood
the level of randomness was at an unreal
level and not in a fun way and when that
poor gameplay
wound up leading to a stunted ending all
because i did well
and recruited many characters i was
disappointed going back to end it
properly by trying to delay beating a
villain wasn’t appealing either
i didn’t find the gameplay to be fun and
the logic behind getting a better ending
is just dumb no we can’t defeat the lord
of evil who cuts heads off right now
you two have to discuss the coldness in
your marriage there will be no time to
sort that out later once your next and
child are safe
now kiss also on another note this game
is definitely not for kids
there’s mature and bizarre content from
child cannibalism
to a depiction of rape to constant
sexual jokes from moira
to a moldy bound corpse of a woman and
so on
lastly how the game looks and sounds i
think that the artwork is fine
but it doesn’t very much characters are
done in the visual novel style and cut
scenes often show simple backgrounds
without the minute
it’s pleasant enough to look at but it’s
rather static and simple
characters have certain reactions and
those are played over and over again
meanwhile the soundtrack does eventually
feel repetitive
the quality of the songs is fine however
there are only eight of them
and all together the soundtrack is 20
minutes long
with each song being about two to four
minutes plus
two of these eight are for battle and
the other six
are what are heard regularly the average
time to beat the game
is listed as about 41 hours and it took
me a couple less than that but this
means that the same six songs keep
repeating for
hours they didn’t blend into the
background either 20 minutes is a pretty
short soundtrack for this long of a game
and the lack of additional songs is
noticeable
but like the scald sing you can’t always
get what you want
