by 
Northern Journey, as I understand it, was made by one Norwegian guy with no prior game development experience. You wouldn’t know that from playing it – sure, it’s rough around the edges in places, but the mood is well-crafted and the gameplay is quite engaging.
In Northern Journey, you are shipwrecked after someone shoots up your rowboat. Soon after, a mysterious flute player tasks you with recovering several items stolen by the village madman up ahead. You find a strange village populated by an evil perfectly normal priest, some definitely-not-witches, a witch doctor, and several other curious residents. Your journey takes you to many unique and unusual places, all populated by an assortment of strange creatures you have to take down with weapons you find along the way.
I discovered this game in a “Souls-like” list I ended up watching late one evening on YouTube, compiled by a pineapple-man. Though I’m not sure why it got that moniker, the atmosphere created by the game certainly lines up. Every corner is filled with strange creatures and NPCs and your best weapon is a sling that takes a good second and a half to wind up. The music (composed by the developer) perfectly suits the areas you explore, often using that strange in-between timbre between voice and electronic to give an even greater otherworldly vibe to the places you visit.
The combat is perhaps a bit simplistic, but there is at least a bit of strategy involved (a la the long windup on your sling). Mastering the sling still feels good, especially when taking down a flying enemy from far away. Enemies are typically heard before they are seen, especially since most blend in well with the environment. I’ve complained about enemies not standing out in other games, but here (as opposed to an FPS or RPG) it works to deepen the feeling of panic when you know an enemy is nearby but can’t see it (or lose track of it through the trees). This feeling of fragility is supported even as your arsenal expands, encouraging caution at every step.
This, unfortunately, brings us to my criticisms. First, there is no in-game saving: it’s all done through quicksaves using 5 and 7 on your keyboard (well, you could create a manual save, but I don’t know why you would). This makes it all-too-tempting to simply reload the latest save if you get hit even once. This is one area where I think a Souls-like influence would have been useful – having “shrines” or the equivalent where you could save and regain health would suit the atmosphere and gameplay far better, I think. As it is, you find both health and ammo just scattered around like it’s a Quake level. On the other hand, the occasions where you must fight with the geometry only to plunge yourself into the abyss (Trollhole is the worst, and not because of the cave filled with terrifying spiders) would become all the more frustrating if this were the case.
All in all, I enjoyed my two hours in Northern Journey so far, and I look forward to beating it in the future. For now, it goes into Tier One – and I’d recommend giving it a try even if it doesn’t ultimately stay there, just for the atmosphere and unique combat mechanics.