A Nordic reimaging of Vampire Survivors, with a visual update and a fancy skill tree for each character class. A charming, albeit grindy experience awaits. Beware, this one is addictive.


🟩Pros:

+ Cheap for what’s on offer
+ Charming and memorable art direction
+ Ultimate abilities are a distinguishing feature
+ Shrines, which after a set number of nearby kills, reward items
+ A lot of content planned that, once released, will provide plenty of replayability
+ Steady flow of updates since my initial review

🟥Cons:

- Limited playstyles early on
- At first it feels like you’re offered great build diversity, but you quickly realise some skills are much better than others (subjective take)

🏷️ Suggestions:

~ The ability to mix skill trees, or have access to more weapons with each character class (implemented)
~ Tweak the rate at which you acquire leaves (adjusted with an update, much better since my initial review)
~ Add a turbo (2x speed) mode, please, this will improve user experience greatly


Nordic Ashes sits strongly among others in the genre. At its core, you play as a Norse warrior, battling against wave after wave of enemies while levelling your skills and weapons. What sets it apart? You now have a special ability – An ultimate if you will – Which you can activate when not on cooldown.

This loop is what you expect, and what Nordic Ashes delivers. Kill, collect experience, level up, choose what to upgrade, and repeat until you defeat the boss (or they defeat you). The formula remains true to the genre and doesn’t do much to differentiate itself. And you know what? That’s a good thing (don’t fix something that isn’t broken)!

You earn coins during runs which can then be used at checkpoints (these occur when you defeat mini bosses before the final boss). The purchases on offer range from additional health, shields, active items, or equipment (skills) to help you achieve victory. This inclusion captured me and made me excited each time I had the chance to spend my hard-earned coins. There’s also a special item which you can collect here that lets you evolve your skills once they reach max level, giving them new abilities!

Meta progression is present here. You earn leaves which you can use to give yourself permanent upgrades, making all future runs that little bit easier. I love this element, but it does come with a flaw, and that’s the pace at which you earn these leaves. Not only the pace, but also the costs, and the benefits received.

Nordic Ashes contains grind – A lot of grind – And harder difficulties will see you needing to farm leaves to improve your ability tree. I feel like the difficulty is inconsistent, as my first three runs saw me defeating the boss. Later however, I just felt too weak to do much (this may have been a knowledge or skill issue).

One thing which bothered me was the whole “design your build” aspect. Yes, you get to choose your build, but it is limiting. Eventually you will try all of your abilities and realise some outshine others greatly, and you’ll pick and choose most of the same upgrades run after run. I imagine balancing a game such as this would be difficult, however I don’t feel like I am really designing a build, rather I am following a cookie cutter path which works.


Crisp, cartoony, and charming are some words which immediately come to mind. I love the art of Nordic Ashes. Not only is the world beautiful, the characters, weapons, abilities, and constellation (your skill tree) are brilliantly done.

A notable mention is the performance. Even late in the game when your screen is filled with enemies and special effects, there are no dips or delays. Despite looking much nicer than others in the genre, it isn’t plagued by choppy or delayed movement – Hats off to the developers!


For me, the game needs more time in the oven before I can give it a higher rating. Once released, I’m sure it’ll be amazing, but for now I feel it is held back skill trees. Maybe it’s me, but I always saw myself following the same constellation path each run. Not because I didn’t want to explore other skills, but because the ones I decided on worked, and worked well.

Also, the longevity feels like it’s tied too heavily to the ability tree and how many leaves you collect, which makes it feel like more of a grind than anything. However, the classes, their skills, and how they play are significantly varied, helping replayability greatly. There is plenty in the works


Nordic Ashes is a great game which, since my initial review, has introduced new characters, items, maps, and modes. For the price along with the content on offer, it's a no brainer. I’ve paid more for other games which have given me less enjoyment. Give it a try, you wont regret it.

Follow BSR for more bite sized reviews.

Follow our curator page: IndieGems if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.

Highly Recommended.
This is my favourite traditional style bullet heaven game to date. The only game that falls in this genre that I like more is Brotato but I feel that game is different enough from the genre as a whole that its largely its own thing. As a game clearly trying to be like Vampire Survivors, 20 Minutes Till Daw, Halls of Torment and many others...this is best version of that.

Its hard to really explain why...I just think this hits that mostly mindless zen state game play with meaningful progression and yet offers enough engagement and choice to not get boring. Hours slip away playing this game like they would playing Diablo for example.

I think the progression trees between runs are deceptively well made. The ultimate unlocks for them have a HUGE impact that you really feel even if on the surface you might not realise why. I really like how this game has familiar feeling runs rather than chaos of other games in the genre...here you typically have a go to build that you can then expand from rather than other games where you largely go with the flow of RNG.

Great game. Admittedly it starts out off putting. I don't care for the art style of this game and those first couple of runs are GLACIAL in pace...it gives a pretty negative first impression but you really do slowly build from there to something that's a lot more fun.

As someone who has 100% this game on Steam achievements as of this writing, I cannot recommend this game enough. It is fun, addicting, has plenty of meta progression and build variety, and has so much content even in its early access state.

All of the achievements are reasonable and are tied to unlocks, so you are always getting something new. There are many challenge levels in the Ragnarok / Nightmare modes and so much meta progression from both stat and item unlocks.

I have 738 games in my library and this is the first one that I ever 100% and wanted to 100%. If that doesn't show how good this game is, I don't know what will. I am a huge roguelike / roguelite fan and have played most of the big hits, and this one deserves to be up there. I look forward to its full release and can't wait to see what content will be added.

10/10
I've played all the noteworthy vampire survivors clones out there and this is one of my top 3. Very robust progression system where you feel noticeably more powerful as you unlock all the items and talents.
- Developers constantly updating the game with so much free content...including skins.
- Content includes new realms (currently 8/9 realms), new characters (currently 10), and weapons / items.
- Each realm has traditional normal, hard, and expert difficulties to start. Followed by Ragnarok levels and nightmare which is basically this game's take on endless.
Like I said, if you like vampire survivor clones, pick this m'fer up.
-1 Negative. The game should have key re-mapping like c'mon folks it's 2023...every damn game should have key re-mapping at this point.

One of the best Survivor games out there!

I own at least 15 games in this genre including (of course) Vampire Survivors, Nordic Ashes does not simply repeat the VS formula. It makes several changes and, for me, the most important being - it rewards skill and strategy to a far greater degree than most others including VS.

Excellent in game upgrade tree and rewarding permanent upgrade tree. Grinding is there but you feel like you are getting somewhere. Excellent game play balance and well thought out.
9/10. In my top five games along with:
Vampire Survivors
Rogue Genesia,
Army Of Ruin
Greedland

Deep Rock Galactic Survivors (Would be up there but not enough content yet).

As someone who decided to buy all, or at least as many survivor games as possible, I can say:
Buy it, it's one of the best in the genre!

4.99 and more content that D4.

Was looking for something after getting all trophies on Brotato and this is the best I found.
Great graphics and universe for an autoshoot autoaim game, highly recommended.
EDIT: two days and 15hrs of gameplay later, I can say this is one of the most addictive games I've ever played. Absolute masterpiece.

Like my other favorite of this genre, Brotato, Nordic Ashes expertly toys with the player's expectations of how different game mechanics will manifest. As you figure things out, there will be plenty of "aha!" moments as you become aware of the many layers of systems that are brilliantly overlapping here, or at least there were for me. I see myself putting a few hundred hours of time into this one, especially as different elements are added to spice things up.

Given that AAA gaming is basically in shambles at the time of this writing, it sure is nice to be both saving money by almost exclusively purchasing indie titles that ironically provide INFINITELY more value to me than a $70 ludo-narrative preach-fest that grinds away on the backs of a hundred person slave-labor asset team. Thanks indie devs!

There's always going to be whiney babies finding a reason to hate on a video game, and with Nordic Ashes the reason is grind. The top review says it takes 1-3 hours to get a single upgrade, and you need to do that 100 times which is a blatant lie or a terrible exaggeration . There is also a skill that will auto pick up the currency needed to progress the skill tree which can be grabbed pretty early on. The rate at which you can get the currency needed to aquire % upgrades and anything else on the skill tree is fine, don't let these stupid reviews mislead you.

Nordic Ashes is fun. I don't see how you could dislike this game and like Vampire Survivors as they are pretty much the same exact game, with slightly different twists. Also has a pretty good amount of content as it stands, with seemingly much more coming eventually.