Zombie Vikings

I'm going to be straight: I came to Zombie Vikings expecting a throwaway novelty and left thinking it earned its place in the Castle Crashers tier conversation, but only barely and only with company. This is a side-scrolling 2D brawler built around one premise - four rotten zombie heroes, Gunborg, Seagurd, Hedgy, and Caw-kaa, chasing Loki across Norse mythology to get Odin's stolen eye back - and that premise is delivered with enough crude energy to carry the first half before the combat starts dragging its feet. The move set is basic but functional: standard attacks, chargeable heavy versions, jump attacks, and a special unique to each character. Seagurd's squid hybrid kit feels noticeably different from Gunborg's tank-forward approach, and swapping characters at the start of each level keeps things from feeling locked in. There are over 40 weapons to find or buy with in-game gold, and while most of them swing similarly, a handful have distinct effects - lifesteal on hit, stacking poison, an electro burst on contact. The rune system layers on passive buffs that let you nudge a build toward something personal without ever getting deep enough to call it a proper RPG. Side quests scatter through each level and reward new gear, ranging from weird to genuinely absurd (rescuing someone from a whale's blowhole is about as representative as it gets). Boss fights ask for a bit more than spam-attack, which helps. Here is where the radar starts flickering: online play has no matchmaking. You are limited to inviting Steam friends directly, or using Remote Play Together, so if your crew is not already on board, this game's multiplayer exists only on paper. Local co-op is the intended experience, full stop, and it shows - the shared-screen chaos, the ability to literally stitch your teammates into a mega-zombie tower for height advantage, the comedy of using a downed ally's severed head as a thrown weapon - all of that lands in person and goes flat alone. Solo gets a unicorn-pig sidekick to compensate, which is exactly as weird as it sounds and not quite enough. Repetition creeps in around the midpoint; enemy variety is thin and palette swaps do most of the heavy lifting past the halfway mark. A 2023 Steam user flagged progression-blocking bugs where enemies get stuck off-screen, and that kind of jank is still present enough to matter if you hit the wrong checkpoint. The art direction is genuinely impressive and deserves a mention. Everything is hand-drawn and flat, like an animated pop-up book, with detailed environments that range from candy swamp to the intestines of the Midgaard Serpent. Cutscenes are generous and voice acting holds up. The humor is juvenile and scattershot - some absurdist bits land, modern pop-culture references date badly - but it lands often enough in co-op that you will be laughing at something every session, even if not always at the joke Zoink intended. Metacritic sits at 74 and Steam reviews at 77 percent positive, which is about right: not a forgotten gem, not a disappointment, just a competent brawler that needed either deeper combat or a larger friend group than most people can muster on a Tuesday.

Fred · Scout Team

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