Your Viking clan is in trouble – unless you find a way to endure a chilly new frontier. In Landnama, your strategy starts with searching tiles around your home village for places to raise sheep, gather timber and reel in fish. As your settlement grows, you’ll stockpile resources. Winter’s toll will consume more with each passing year; surviving won’t be easy. But when did a Viking ever back down from a challenge?

What we love: A perfectly balanced settlement. Forming a thriving society of shipbuilders, carpenters and blacksmiths – while stashing away enough resources to withstand the annual deep freeze – feels like a victory worthy of an epic saga.

Quick tip: Don’t spend your first Mastery points until you’ve uncovered a good chunk of the map and know what you’re dealing with. Got plenty of forests? Invest in Timbercraft to boost your woodcutters. Lots of mountains? Put points into Bonecarver to give your hunters an edge.

Meet the creator: Michael Champion, Mario Kaiser and Mathias Tournier formed a globe-spanning alliance when they founded Sonderland Games. Sonderland is also behind the roguelike tower defence games Bella Wants Blood and Core Defense.