I've noticed a certain low-key (pun intended?) trend in Indie games of late as a medium to tell stories based around specific cultures, couching the mythology and folklore of proud and ancient peoples in traditional video game formats. Year Walk and Never Alone were particularly potent examples of this concept, both of which were meticulously researched and developed by those who live in the areas once occupied by the storytellers they venerate (Sweden and Alaska, respectively). It's a fascinating way to establish yourself as a development studio to watch and to establish your homeland as one of many competing in this global marketplace of ideas. People who care about this sort of thing are presumably ticking off a mental checklist of the steps video games have to make before they can be considered an artform akin to movies or music, and a strong international presence that finds a way to honor the culture of a forgotten civilization through their art has to be one of them.

With Jotun, that's not quite the case - the developers originate in Canada which, while harsh and frostbitten in its own right, isn't quite the land of sagas and longboats - but it still adroitly expounds on Norse mythology from the perspective of a burly warrior maiden whose time had come too soon. Because she died an inglorious death at sea, she is tasked with proving herself to the Gods before they allow her to enter Valhalla with the rest of the honored dead. To do this, she must slay five Jotun: the race of ice giants so often at odds with the Asgardian deities. Despite being ice giants, each inhabits a different element - fire, ice, nature, lightning and, uh, dwarves - and involves a couple of cleverly-themed stages followed by a climactic boss fight. The stages embody environments that remind me of Hyper Light Drifter, especially in how the angled perspective can sometimes hide paths and how the themes of these disparate regions also determine the type of puzzles the player might face. For instance, the "Nine Lakes" area of the frost Jotun's realm is a sea covered in icebergs through which a biting Arctic wind howls every half minute. This wind is strong enough to sap the heroine's strength, but there's usually enough early warning to run behind a convenient wall of ice to ride it out. It's a fairly common instance, one that tests the limits of the player's risk vs. reward temperament, but serves to demonstrate for the purposes of this review how each of these stages are built around two things: an environmental hazard that serves to define the gameplay objective for that stage, and a fantastical setting based on Norse mythology that the player can gawk at.

Speaking of which, while the game's static graphics like backgrounds and terrain are presentable and will occasionally give way to impressive vistas, the animation is the star of the show here. Each sprite, in particular the mighty towering Jotun, has this wonderful hand-drawn animation style to them that hearkens back to classic Disney, or perhaps a better Don Bluth feature. It's not unlike the similarly Norse-heavy The Banner Saga, if not quite as fluid, and it makes the boss fights feel that much more striking to watch. Unfortunately, these centerpiece boss fights have a smattering of issues, chief of which I feel is the direct result of the game's painterly art style. Because the bosses and their shadows are drawn with softer borders, it's difficult to visually register hit boxes, and you often find yourself getting hit by attacks that ought to have missed and, in turn, missing attacks that ought to have hit. This is doubly true if you happen to be standing behind Jotun, attacking their heads even though they should be far out of reach due to the odd rules of the angled perspective the game uses. Worse still, the way bosses telegraph attacks is useless since a few of them will adjust these attacks at the very last second. These attacks are too big to avoid unless you're already moving to account for where the wind-up is pointing, and if they do hit you it's a huge block of damage. Given the game has incorporated achievements for zero-damage fights and a single-life hardcore setting named "Valhalla Mode", these cheap unavoidable hits are all the more aggravating. It's not like these are short boss fights either: if you've played a lot of games that prioritize boss fights you're probably familiar with the "slow but steady wins the race" battle-of-attrition style of drawn-out fights, and this game is nothing but those so, well... prepare for some annoyances if you're trying to be a styling badass.

Fortunately for us normies, there's a selection of special powers the heroine can acquire from shrines to various Gods scattered across each world (as well as some sorely needed permanent health boosts). These range from heals (though they don't heal much), temporary invincibility, a fast damaging attack, a decoy that draws enemy fire, and so on. You only have two or three of each, but they can serve to save your hide when the chips are down and the bosses become that much more aggressive once their health bars drop below half. Otherwise you're left with the heroine's beloved axe, which you can swing in arcs for chip damage or charge up for a stronger attack that does about five times the damage of a swing but takes three times longer to come down: if you don't time it right, the boss will have moved away before the attack lands, wasting the opportunity.

Were I being generous, I'd call Jotun a fine minimalist boss run game with some equally fine if perfunctory exploration and puzzle-solving stages to break up the climactic fights. That would save myself some heartache in trying to explain verbally issues that really need to be experienced first-hand to appreciate their deleteriousness: hit box incongruities, exceptionally slow movement, how the game's very deliberate animations will sometimes fling the hero out of the way if they happen to occupy the same space as a collapsing Jotun for instance, and that the bosses all have way too much health that causes their fights to stretch out interminably. I don't want to dissuade anyone from trying the game - I'd put it on par with Titan Souls for how satisfying the boss fights feel to conquer, even if they're not always fair, and all the Norse lore is genuinely interesting if a little familiar if you've played any of the hundred other games that base themselves on the same pantheon (or that upcoming God of War reboot, for that matter). I would advise, though, that you play the game "casually" and make use of those special God powers to mitigate the handful of frustrating issues the game has. Considering it was recently given away on Steam for free to promote Thunder Lotus Game's next game Sundered, I'd say it's absolutely worth your time if you were lucky enough to grab a copy.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

I feel the same way, I liked a lot of the ideas but the movement felt real weird especially in boss fights where the camera would zoom in and out. That thunder boss gave me fits, her attacks were really hard to dodge at times due to the hut box issues.

I feel the same way, I liked a lot of the ideas but the movement felt real weird especially in boss fights where the camera would zoom in and out. That thunder boss gave me fits, her attacks were really hard to dodge at times due to the hut box issues.