Northgard Battlegrounds Launches on Steam Early Access With Three Viking Clans
Funday Games and Shiro Games send Northgard's Vikings into asynchronous PvP today, trading city-building strategy for a fast-paced auto-battler in early access.
Northgard's Vikings have a new way to fight each other. Northgard Battlegrounds, a city-building auto-battler spun out of Shiro Games' Viking strategy series, entered Steam Early Access today, October 27, for PC. The game is developed by Funday Games, the Danish studio behind Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, and published under Shiro Games' Shiro Unlimited label.
What launched today
Northgard Battlegrounds swaps the original Northgard's real-time territory grabs for turn-based village building that feeds into automated combat. Players pick one of three available clans, the Raven, the Stag or the Wolf, and raise a Townhall on an empty plot of land. Each round, they place economic buildings near resources to boost production, put up military structures to recruit warriors, and build mythical sites that summon creatures for the fight ahead.
At the end of every round, the warband that player built marches into an automated battle against a rival clan. There's no direct unit control once the fight starts; the outcome comes down to how well a player's buildings, blessings and Fate cards work together going in. Shiro Games describes the hook plainly on the game's Steam store page: every building placed shapes a clan's fate.
How the auto-battler actually plays
The city-building half of Northgard Battlegrounds leans on adjacency bonuses, the same kind of spatial puzzle that made the original Northgard's economy tense. A barracks next to a lumber camp, or a shrine next to a market, can change how a warband performs before a single blow lands. Layered on top are blessings from Odin, Baldr and Thor, which nudge a run toward a particular playstyle, and Fate cards that let a clan commit to a stronger, more specific build as a match goes on.
Combat itself is asynchronous. Instead of queuing into a live match against another player, a clan's warband is recorded and then pitted against other players' warbands whenever the game needs an opponent, closer in spirit to a ladder than a real-time skirmish. Shiro Games has run the loop through a public beta in July and a demo during two Steam Next Fest windows, most recently adding the Wolf clan to the previously playable Raven and Stag on October 19.
From dwarves to Vikings
Funday Games arrives at Northgard Battlegrounds with one of the better-known indie success stories of the last two years already behind it. The studio's Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, an auto-shooter spin-off of Ghost Ship Games' mining shooter, sold roughly half a million copies in its first week of Early Access and has gone on to pass two million copies since leaving Early Access in 2025. That track record of taking a familiar universe and rebuilding it around a different genre is exactly what Funday is attempting again here, this time with Shiro Games' nine-year-old Viking strategy series standing in for Ghost Ship's dwarves.
Shiro Games, for its part, has used the Shiro Unlimited label to let outside studios build inside its own worlds before, and Northgard Battlegrounds is the most visible result yet. The original Northgard left its own Early Access in March 2018 after roughly a year of public testing, a timeline the Battlegrounds team is openly using as a reference point for how long this new spin-off might need.
What's still ahead
Shiro Games and Funday Games have said Northgard Battlegrounds will stay in Early Access while they add content, adjust balance and respond to community feedback, following the same playbook Funday used on Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. No fixed date has been given for a full 1.0 release, and nothing has been announced yet about consoles; today's launch covers PC through Steam only. Players should treat any console version as unconfirmed for now rather than assume one is coming.
Getting into Early Access
Northgard Battlegrounds is available now on the Northgard Battlegrounds Steam page, with a free demo still listed separately for players who want to try the Raven, Stag and Wolf clans before buying in. Shiro Games has not detailed a long-term roadmap beyond saying new clans, buildings and modes are planned over the course of Early Access, mirroring how the publisher has supported other Northgard spin-offs and expansions since the original game's 2017 debut.
For a studio the size of Shiro Games, handing an outside team the keys to one of its flagship settings is its own small bet. Northgard has spawned a board game, Northgard: Uncharted Lands, and its own expansions since 2017, but Battlegrounds marks the first time another developer has built a full standalone video game inside that world rather than an add-on to the original city-builder. If Funday Games' history with Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is any guide, the clearest signal of whether that bet pays off won't come from today's launch trailer, but from how quickly the Early Access build changes once real matchmaking data starts coming in.
Official links
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