Roots of Yggdrasil

Written by Jason Dailey on 9/4/2024 for PC  

I’ve been searching high and low for a roguelike game that could finally get its hooks in me. One that would not frustrate me to the point of deleting it from my system within half an hour. One with a gameplay loop that clicks for me. I am happy to report that Roots of Yggdrasil has cured my case of roguelike FOMO, and it only took the marriage of a genre I love to do so. That genre is city-building, and combined with both roguelike and deckbuilding systems, Roots of Yggdrasil has finally completed the circuit for me when it comes to roguelikes.

In Roots of Yggdrasil, Ragnarok has set itself upon the land, leaving all manner of threats in its wake. Playing as Sunna, you must attempt to lead your band of Vikings to the top of Yggdrasil while evading the Ginnungagap, referred to henceforth as simply, “the dark fog”. Each loop, or run, consists of setting out on your ship, stopping at procedurally generated islands along the way. On each island, you must gather seeds of Yggdrasil saplings to power-up your ship to continue your journey. Gathering seeds requires meeting certain conditions to unlock each one, such as building two industry buildings next to a sapling or completing four adventures. The catch is that you also must work your way towards each sapling on an island, which is done by building and expanding your settlement each turn.

Roots of Yggdrasil’s building systems are part city-builder, part card-based deck-builder, and it pulls the two together quite well. There are dozens of cards (buildings) that you can acquire for your deck, including houses, barracks, water wells, watchtowers, and many more. Constructing a building (playing a card) requires the resources listed on each card. So for instance, you may need three houses in the vicinity and 10 supplies to place that building. Resources are forms of currency and include population, supplies, might, and Eitr. These are accrued through build-up play somewhat like 4X strategy games. Each building placed typically adds to your resources, sometimes on a recurring basis after each turn. Then there are artifacts, which persist during your entire run and provide passive bonuses, as well as your Scion (hero) which also has a passive and active skill, such as lowering building construction costs for the first three turns.

It sounds like a lot of moving parts, and it is, but for the most part it just works well. I say mostly because there are some elements that feel superficial on some runs, though that is a minor gripe. Things like panic cards, which get added to your deck during random events had little bearing on my strategy most of the time, as I could just avoid playing them, or simply end my turn all together. Speaking of turns, Roots of Yggdrasil produces a sense of urgency through its turn-based system that gives a set amount of turns on each island before the dark fog begins to invade. If said dark fog catches up to your ship before you can gather the necessary seeds and escape, that’ll be the end of that run. You can see the timeline at the top of the screen, so there is no guesswork in how much time you have left before the fog settles in and swallows you up.

At the start of each island, the first thing you’ll want to do is survey the lay of the land – where are the Yggdrasil saplings and what are the unlock requirements? Answering those questions first will let you devise a plan of attack. I should mention that there are usually more saplings available than what is necessary, meaning you will have to make strategic decisions on which ones to pursue. Of course, things aren’t always as straightforward as they appear, as what looks like a short route ends up being a winding path that will be massive strains on your resources, likely leaving you pressed for time. To that end, the game applies just the right amount of tension without feeling insurmountable, which is another massive reason I appreciated its approach as a roguelike. Its pressure comes from time and resource management, rather than trying to dodge swaths of enemy attacks.

Between islands you will visit the overworld map, which is where you will select your next island adventure. There is a bit of strategy to consider here too, as each move you make reduces the amount of the time until the dark fog catches up to you, adding curse cards to your deck. Beyond that, and perhaps more importantly than avoiding the dark fog, you will be deciding between whether to stop at an encounter that could add an artifact to your run, or choosing an upgraded version of a building card. Or you could just skip past all of that and go straight to the next island – it is totally up to you. But even the permanent resources you can earn that carryover between each run is dependent upon the islands you choose to visit. Sometimes making a pit stop to add an artifact (a run-spanning buff) provided a huge lift in subsequent runs, as opposed to adding an upgraded card to my deck.

Inevitably, you will succumb to the dark fog and be forced to start anew. Of course, as a roguelike, this doesn’t mean starting totally from scratch. Back at your base camp, known as The Holt, you can unlock permanent upgrades, buy cards for your deck, add challenge modifiers, and build up your settlement. Upgrades are purchases using resources you earned by completing islands on a loop, and those same resources can be used to buy card packs that add more to your deck for the next run. The best part about The Holt is the ability to customize it and build structures that provide bonuses for future runs. Placing a campfire near a house provides a +1 boost to population at the start of each island, for instance. Building up The Holt and customizing it to your liking does a great job of adding to the feeling of ongoing progression, no matter how many times you die. And if you find yourself not dying enough (you sicko), then challenge modifiers called Trials of the Gods let you tune the difficulty to your heart’s content by adding things like a time limit on each turn, but the tradeoff is earning larger rewards for impressing the gods.

I’d be remiss not to mention that I spent all my time with Roots of Yggdrasil on Steam Deck, where it plays perfectly – befitting of its Steam Deck Verified status. The right track pad is used heavily and intuitively as a mouse cursor to place buildings and navigate menus. And while the game does save between islands, letting you quit and come back to your run later, Steam Deck’s sleep mode feature takes it a step further, letting you suspend the game mid-island should you choose. Simply put, it is a perfect game to play on Deck.

Ultimately, Roots of Yggdrasil is a good spin on the roguelike genre, and one that should appeal to those who typically shy away from its trappings. It’s combination of city-building and card-based deckbuilding make it both inviting and forgiving, while remaining challenging. When I died, I knew it was my fault because of strategic choices I had made along the way, meaning it never felt unfair. Though not all its intricacies seem to matter in the grand scheme of things, its depth does not detract from its fun factor. It is a roguelike cocktail tailor-made for me and those like me, finally letting me wrap my brain around the live-die-repeat structure without wanting to snap my controller in half. If there is such a thing as a Zen roguelike experience, Roots of Yggdrasil is it.