Nordhold

Thronefall from GrizzlyGames showed what a modern, minimalistic and successful strategy game can look like. Nordhold from StunForge, also from Germany, combines tower defense, city-building, and roguelite elements while still being accessible and offering high replay value. It quickly became a success, too.

Nordhold is a cleverly combined strategy game that mixes tower defense with strategic city building/management and roguelite elements. The goal is to defend a medieval city against hordes of invading enemies. At the beginning, there is a path into the city to be defended, which the player can do with eight different towers that automatically attack the approaching enemies. The towers are built along the path, and elevation plays a role in their placement, especially in range. All towers offer numerous upgrades, even with a handy auto-upgrade option, and useful setting options, such as what attack priorities certain enemies should have (e.g. low health, etc.). At first glance, the towers appear to be fairly standard. However, the perks and upgrades available in certain waves make all the difference, up to and including powerful fusions. However, mazing is not possible, i.e. the player cannot directly influence the path of the enemies.

What starts as a small path becomes longer and longer from wave to wave, because each time the player starts the next wave, a new map element is revealed, which is procedurally generated. So the path for the enemies gets increasingly longer, and of course the enemies get stronger and more numerous. It is important to strategically place the different types of turrets to stop the onslaught. While the turrets and their effects are largely standard, the many upgrades and combination options make the game stand out. And in between selected waves, the roguelite elements come into play with buffs and decisions - like whether the arrows fired from the Arrow Towers should have a chance to be recharged by an adjacent Arc Tower so they can jump to other targets.

But that is not all. Then a Hero comes into play (during wave five), with various passive effects and (limited) spells that can be used during the defense phases. The Heroes themselves are not on the map or in the battle. And then there are Relics that grant across the board and the Oracle that gives you different choices: five waves of stronger enemies with higher rewards, or five waves of cheaper tower construction? There is a lot of room for synergy, merging of effects, or snowballing, as the developers call it. Everything that can be permanently unlocked or that only affects the current run is explained in a way that is not entirely clear, but transparent and very understandable.

Between waves, players can construct buildings in the city, upgrade them, and make many decisions, such as whether to cut more wood and collect more stone to get more resources for the towers, or harvest more wheat to get more workers to produce more resources. This is not a 'real' city builder where players can freely place buildings, no, there are predefined slots, but it does require planning when deciding what to build and in what order, which upgrades make sense, and where synergies arise. There are more than 20 buildings, including a trading post, tavern, druid house, and university, where players must constantly balance economic growth and defense.

The further players get in the game, the more Honor they collect. Honor is the meta-progression currency that can be used to buy permanent upgrades that can be taken between runs - so players get stronger from session to session - apart from other permanent unlocks. However, this also means that failure is part of the game and progression can take a while. The key elements are unlocked after 2-3 runs.

Nordhold is being developed by StunForge from North Rhine-Westphalia, which was founded in 2023 by Sebastian Pokutta and Nando Caputo Crapa. "Two IT-experts with a shared vision: we transform our passion for gaming into unique gaming experiences. Our approach? We combine Business know-how with creative innovation to create not just games, but experiences that stand out," this is how the two founders describe their company. The core Nordhold team consists of seven people, with five additional contributors. The studio also co-publishes Nordhold with publishing partner HypeTrain Digital.

Nordhold was released for PC on 25 March 2025 at a price of €19.99. In the week of its launch, the game reached more than 5,400 CCU (concurrent users on Steam), far exceeding the developers' expectations.

Conclusion

Nordhold is an excellent mix of tower defense, city management, and roguelite progression with high replayability.

Features

• Great mix of tower defense gameplay, strategic upgrades, and management
• High replayability, meta progression, and lots of combinations/synergies
• Many clever and useful Options