The Frostrune Review

Liv, a Norwegian girl in the summer of 965 BC, is the sole survivor of a shipwreck, and ends up a castaway on a deserted island. Liv, aged 13, quickly learns that the island is haunted by several entities, some good, some evil. You meet a ghostly sorceress who gives you her staff that makes you able to visit the spirit world – an alternate version of reality where you can interact with the spirit entities haunting the island. You are tasked with getting rid of the evil spirits and making the island habitable once again.

On your adventure you meet several ghosts. Old, singing, norse warriors, water sprites, a rune-horse, ravens and the all-evil frost draugr. Completing puzzles through the land and helping the ghostly apparitions you learn about the world, and norse mythology in general. In the end you must defeat the evil frost draugr. To do so, you need a different set of runes to capture him and to expell him from the world, thus bringing back prosperity to the land, making it yet again habitable.

The Frostrune serves as a nice look in to the world of Norse Mythology. Scattered around the game are notes and journals providing the player with extra knowledge on the subject, if you are so inclined. The architecture of the buildings are authentic and so are the odd bits and pieces you see arond the game (depictions of the old gods for example). The game itself is done in the style of a slideshow point-and-click game. Every new frame you visit looks nice, and every frame has it’s own opposite spirit world frame that you can freely toggle between. Visiting the spirit worlds prompts the player with the ghostly inhabitors of the island, and is needed to complete the puzzles.

The puzzles themselves starts out easy enough, but will progressively get harder and harder, some of them requiring a bit of thinking to complete. The game itself is a bit short, it can be completed in about 1-5 hours depending on how much grief the puzzles are giving you. The story of the game is alright, nothing special, and is probably the biggest minus I find about the game. It is a bit uninspiring, but well packaged in to the whole Norse Mythology thing. It is not overly exciting.

Most dialogue in the game is done by the ghostly sorceress who speaks in Norwegian which does help giving it a more authentic feel. When travelling between the ghost realm and the normal world sound effects and music changes. The music itself is alright, nothing to write home about, but it fits the game and the atmosphere.

The art style of the game is certainly one of it’s strong points. The real world being bright and colorful and the ghost world cold, blue and damp. Mixed inbetween are a lot of classic nordic symbols from the viking era. The ghosts, although inanimate most of the time, are interesting to look at, and at times a bit creepy. Walking around the abandoned town does give the player a sense of abandonment and being all-alone in a creepy way.

The Frostrune, all in all, is an interesting title. You don’t see too many point-and-click games done with the theme of norse mythology, so it is a nice change of pace (especially since I am from Scandinavia myself). The story is a bit weak, but not horrible. If you are a fan of norse mythology I’d say it is definatly worth a playthrough.