Vikings on Trampolines Hands-On Preview | gamescom 2022
Similar to the two-button fighting game Divekick, Vikings on Trampolines is a game that manages to squeeze loads of fun and depth out of the simplest of controls. It’s a 2D bounce ’em up game that’s surprisingly self-explanatory: you’re a viking, bouncing off trampolines and trying to stay alive by dodging the ground like it’s lava. It’s about as easy to learn and play as a game can get, and based on my 15-20 minutes with an early build of the game, it’s a game I’ll definitely learn and a lot more like to play from future.
The great thing about Vikings on Trampolines is that it’s a joystick-only game. Each level starts with you being dropped onto a trampoline, and from there the only thing you can do is move left and right to land on another trampoline to keep yourself alive. You can hold to fall faster, and you can hold to slow down your descent and give yourself a little flutter jump. And that was about it. Those are all the controls you need to explain to someone who has never played.
It’s the things that get between you and the life-saving trampolines that really make Vikings on Trampoline sing – whether it’s other players, enemies that need to be nudged and knocked out, or footballs that need to be hurled into the opponent’s goal. There was a lot of variety, even in the short demo I got to play. The main attraction so far seems to be the adventure mode, which is fully playable in both solo and co-op modes and pits you against a series of boss fights, challenges and mini-games. In a boss fight we had to avoid being crushed by a bird in a huge stone statue and plan our jumps so that we could get over the statue to jump on when it stomped down.
“
In another instance, we had to hop on a constantly moving Viking ship, with trampolines sliding across the deck as the ship was tossed by the waves, while trying to defeat a boss and his pet whale, who occasionally leaps out of the water, and try to swallow the ship whole. It’s an incredibly dynamic boss fight, where the stage changes several times as the whale progressively destroys the ship, causing it to eventually split in two, with one half occasionally submerging, leaving us with just two trampolines to bounce off if we try avoiding falling blocks of ice that threaten to knock us over.
In addition to boss fights, there was also a fun jump rope mini-game, survival missions in which we had to face waves of enemies that burst in from the sky, and there’s even a mini-game that you can play on the world map that gives each player three balloons , Mario Kart style, and lets you fight to be last as you try to knock your friends against the spiked edges of the map.
Vikings on Trampolines shines brightest in multiplayer, and in addition to the cooperative adventure mode, there is also competitive multiplayer for up to four players. I only had to play the simplest cards so it’s hard to tell how wild things can get, but the addition of power-ups certainly made for some messy fun. There’s an ax that’s instantly thrown at the nearest enemy, knocking them off if it hits; You can take a hammer to increase your recoil power. a weight that makes you invincible but makes you jump very low; and wings that allow you to fly high and avoid dangers for a while.
All in all Vikings on Trampolines seems like a blast in the right setting. It remains to be seen if it maintains that level of variety throughout the campaign, or if the fun of multiplayer continues in the solo experience, but otherwise Vikings on Trampolines has all the makings of an indie multiplayer darling of Towerfall-like lines, Samurai Gunn and overcooked.
https://www.ign.com/articles/vikings-on-trampolines-hands-on-preview-gamescom-2022 Vikings on Trampolines Hands-On Preview | gamescom 2022
