Nornloom

Krzysztof Bialowas

About this game

Nornloom is a Norse mythology role-playing game with a card game inside it. You play a skald-in-training from the village of Eikthorp, pulled into the roots of Yggdrasil by the Norn Skuld. The old stories are being forgotten, and the threads of fate are fraying. Walk into those stories, live through them beside the gods, and carry them back so the weave holds.

Every main quest is a real myth from the Eddas, and the myths keep their real endings. Thor loses to Elli. Týr loses his hand. Baldr dies and cannot be saved. You shape how events unfold, never how they end.

Every fight is a hand of Bindrune. Build decks from six peoples (Æsir, Vanir, Jötnar, Dvergar, Helheim and Muspell), offer cards into the Well for Megin, raise a Shieldwall of Warriors, chant Galdr in your foe's turn, and cut the other side's Thread to nothing before the twelfth round ends the game. Warriors lose Armor for good as they fight, so winning still costs something.

- A top-down overworld in the old handheld style: villages, meadows, woods, barrows and fens, with level bands that rise as you travel.
- Sixty regions, hamlets with traders, healers and smiths, and quests from every elder.
- A collection of nearly 1,400 cards: 97 saga cards drawn from the sources, and a host forged by rule for every people.
- Hrafn's lesson teaches the table one thing at a time, and his yard is always there to spar in.
- Play alone, offline. No account, no ads, no tracking, no purchases. Your heroes stay on your device.
- The interface speaks English, Polish, German, Spanish, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. Card text, dialogue and the sagas are in English for now.

Nornloom is an early build, made in the open. Bugs and ideas are welcome on the public GitHub repository, linked from the title screen. The browser version and online play live at nornloom.com.

What’s new

New quests at every level: five side jobs from level 16 to 20 with named foes of their own (a bandit chief, an old boar, a giant spider), and in every land from level 20 an old one to hunt and roads to keep. Fixed on Android: music and sounds play, also with the phone on vibrate; pixel art is sharp and the map walks smoothly; names over heads no longer shake; the app can enter online worlds again; leaving a world no longer wipes your solo hero.