I love Bob Ross. The guy practically raised me. At least for 30 minutes every afternoon on PBS after grade school. I'll admit the internet's 21st century deification of Bob Ross can get tiring, but that's because the internet is tiring—Bob Ross was still one of the good guys that should be celebrated. So, while I was reluctant to click on Bad North's loving parody of The Joy of Painting's host, I was not disappointed.
Transformed into Robert Ragnar Ross, the chainmailed host of The Joy of Pillaging, we get a gentle-voiced painting tutorial on how to carefully and thoughtfully craft a a strategic assault and/or defense of the cute little islands of Bad North. I like how Robert Ragnar Ross is more of an impressionist painter, where his broad brushstrokes miraculously transform into wonderfully animated Viking homes, longships, archers, and pikemen. Not only is this guy's narration fun ("When you're painting blood, you want a nice deep red. Blood is much darker than people think it is") halfway through he even does that thing Bob Ross always did when he'd dip his big ol' brush in paint thinner and then start slapping it back and forth across the legs of his easel. But Robert Ragnar Ross does it for an uncomfortably long period of time.
Sadly, I've only been lukewarm on Bad North, but perhaps I was only waiting for it to land on the right platform. In addition to it being on Switch, Windows, and Xbox One, Bad North is now on iOS and Android.
