Last updated on January 3rd, 2026 at 11:51 pm
Bad North: Jotunn Edition – Strategy Game Review
Bad North: Jotunn Edition is a Strategy/Action game from Raw Fury AB, first launched in 15th October 2019.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 1,701+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Bad North: Jotunn Edition Stand Out
Bad North DOES NOT support: iPhone 5S, 6, 6 Plus, iPad Air/Mini 2, 3/iPod Touch 6th gen and lower
Your home is under attack. The king is dead at the hands of Viking invaders. Hope is a distant glimmer in the fog, fading fast with every passing moment. As you rise to take your father’s place as ruler, it will fall to you to stage your defenses. But make no mistake – this is no fight for victory, but a desperate grasp for survival.
Bad North is a charming but brutal real-time tactics roguelite. Defend your idyllic island kingdom against a horde of Viking invaders, as you lead the desperate exodus of your people. Command your loyal subjects to take full tactical advantage of the unique shape of each island. Everything is at stake: fail, and watch the blood of your subjects stain the ground red.
It’s charmingly brutal, with beautiful procedurally-generated islands and adorable soldiers juxtaposed against the blood-stained realities of war. You control the broad strokes of the battle, giving high level commands to your soldiers who try their best to carry them out in the heat of the moment. It’s accessibly deep, with simple player inputs masking a dynamic combat simulation that make it inviting to new players while challenging veterans.
Keep fighting, warriors. Not for power or riches or glory, but for hope of peace to come once again in the harsh lands of the Bad North.
Key Features
REAL-TIME TACTICS ROGUELITE: Position and relocate your troops to fend off the Vikings, who each have their own counters to the threats you pose. Pick your battles and plan your evacuations carefully! Lose a commander and they’re gone forever; lose everything, and it’s game over!
INTELLIGENT UNIT CONTROLS: You command the broad strokes of your defenses and monitor positioning — your soldiers do the rest, navigating and engaging intuitively in response to the situation at hand.
PROCEDURALLY-GENERATED ISLANDS: Each island is both stylistically charming and unique in its layout. Plan your strategies around every nook and cranny, for you only get one chance to save them from the enemy invasion.
UNLOCKABLE UPGRADES: A stronger, smarter defense leads to greater rewards. Use these to develop your subjects from a ragtag militia into seasoned warriors.
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Bad North: Jotunn Edition is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 17th December 2020
Recent improvements include:
Optimization to memory usage
Download & Availability
Bad North: Jotunn Edition is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Bad North: Jotunn Edition on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
When we start the game it is not letting us press start.
After update 2.00.9 the start button in the welcome screen seems irresponsive, and does not allow the player to proceed into the game. This is happening on an iPhone XS (iOS 13.6.1). Thanks in advance for looking into this.
Game isnt responding anymore, very fun when it works.
The game is a lotta fun, and its beautiful; however, we think it needs more depth, maybe add more classes of enemies and soldiers. Also a wider selection of items would be nice.
We truly do love thins game and have played it for about 17 hours, though it does get a bit repetitive. We think that maybe it would be nice to play as the attackers for once, and also to add more classes such as siege equipment. Or make it so that the battles are more extensive with bigger islands and the ability to have an army to defend or attack hordes of enemies, but at the same time maintaining the the strategic feel to the game. We hope that the developers take note of this review and possibly do something like this.
We enjoy this game as its a nice on the go quick game to play with strategy. But, it has been very buggy recently. We hadnt played in a good month or so, cane back to play and we cant actually start the game. Pressing start game does nothing. Wont get 5 stars until we can play it again.
It loads just fine but when we press play it wont do anything.
Great game been playing it on Xbox, was disappointing to spend $5 on a game we were excited to play on mobile, Just to have it not work.
Had this game on our xbox and had high hopes…. Wouldnt even let get past the title screen with unresponsive buttons.
The game hangs and frozen with start button. What a waste of $5!!. Dont recommend.
Just bought it, thought it looked decent and could kill some time. Cant get past the start screen. IPhone X.
Game sticks in the loading screen of our iPhone XS Max running iOS 13.6.1 For all we know its a great game but we cant play it after paying for it.
We have heard great things about the game but, we cant even touch the start button. Maybe if you fix it then we will give a higher review but until then. Bad.
App crashes sporadically, either while playing, while attempting to navigate to different menus, or simply at launch at the start game screen. Thats where Im at with the app right now, permafrozen at the start game screen. Submitted a support ticket but a paid game really should be having these kinds of rampant issues.
Game seems stuck on the start screen. Wont let us start at all. Really exited about this game, but disappointed as of now.
Awesome game until they update it then you can't even touch to get past menu. What a waste of money.
The start button doesnt work. Its as if the screen doesnt register when we tap it. All other apps work fine. We have deleted the app and redone loaded it as well as restarted our phone several times. This game looked cool too :.
Unable to click start, unable to click share data (or dont share) on 5th gen iPad and same problems on iPhone 11 Pro Max, though data share cleared with app close and restart. Developer support website did not inspire confidence that issue would be correctable. Requested refund through App Store, will wait for next update before possibly trying app again.
The game is nice, gets hard towards the end and normally you just end up fleeing all the islands to save your units which kinda of let down since its m8ch fun to engage in battle. The game however, is not loading at all. It presents us the START icon and when we touch it on our iPad, the game doesnt launch. Please fix this, thanks.
We purchased this game last night, and it will not load past the start screen. There appears to be some sort of input issue when it asks users to press start. Really really disappointing.
It wont let us click start. We have brand new devices- Music plays but the screen wont respond.
Using an iPad Pro and it doesnt go past the title screen. Doesnt work, dont waste your money.
It seems to be, that whenever we try to get in it says start game, so we tap on it, and it doesnt work, so we go on our iPad with a keyboard and press the arrows to log us in, then we press begin, but when it say start the game, we doesnt work, may someone help us fix this problem.
Just bought the game and was enjoying the game play and strategy until a recent update made this unloadable. The game freezes now when loading and now we cant play. What a waste of money spent for only one day of playing. Such a disappointment.
With the recent update the app is stuck at the start button.
Try to make it not crash on mobile.
Plays well, graphics are great for a mobile game with the reflections in the water and the, progress in the game has a feature that makes it unable to go back to previous levels so theres even strategy in the map good game guys buy it its worth it.
We had never heard of Bad North before we saw this mobile version go on sale a couple months back. We wish we had discovered it sooner though because then we wouldve bought, played, and recommended it way sooner. This is a great strategy game that can be played a few minutes or a few hours at a time. We love the art style, the upgrading system, and the sound effects. The turn system was a little confusing at first, but after some trial and error, and watching a few YouTube videos, we figured it out. We recommend the same to those who are on the fence about purchasing this game. Great job devs.
Ive heard a ton about crashes in this game. We have a beat up iPhone 7 and it still runs very well. Ive played for maybe 10 hours and had about 3-4 crashes which havent impeded the fun and strategic appeals of this game. We were on the edge about buying it because so many people said it would barely run, but we ended up getting it and have loved it since. Its totally worth the money. If you have an iPhone 7 or above and youre interested, you should totally get this game. Also Ive had it on 60 FPS instead of 30 and it makes it look way better and still runs great. Edit: we would love to see some new type of unit, it would really spice things up for the people playing it through more than once. Maybe a catapult that you can only get later in the campaign or even a ship of your own with archers or guys with crossbows on it. Crossbows itself could be a good idea. As long as its not too similar to any other troops.
We thought this game was really challenging and hard but is very fun as well 10 out of 10.
Gameplay is great, campaign is challenging ( never made it past 52%) and the different strategies and builds for commanders creates a new challenge every play through. We would like to see more added to the game such as different units, or combat ranking or even a new game mode but all in all great game.
This was a great game from beginning to end. No in-app purchases, just a single price to enjoy all the levels. We read reviews beforehand saying it was buggy but we never encountered any bugs. Im using the newest iPhone so perhaps thats why? Either way, great game and hope for more expansions and/or versions.
We have all ways wanted to play bad north but we did not have the right teach to play it. But know when we saw bad north was on the iPad we just had to get it. Great job. We do think you should put more kinds of troops though.
We love the strategy and the art the only complaint is it very often crashes.
Super fun and challenging, please make a sequel.
We feel like they should add new units to the game and add more upgrades add to where you can have more than four generals.
Since downloading this game we have had a lot of fun with it. Our only problem is that once we hit 90% in a world, the game refuses to load. We ordered a pizza today and it arrived before our save loaded.
App literally wont move past the loading screen at all and has been completely unplayable. Its a shame because we were so excited to play this game, we hope the developers fix this issue.
This game needs some improving but overall it is an amazing game we just hope they treat this like their kingdom franchise.
The game is super fun and the game is perfect for playing where you ever you want Some reviews say the game crashes a lot but that had never happened to us our only complaint is that they need to add more classes because currently there are only 3.
We usually hate arcade games where they get repetitive and boring, but this is a exception. The design is absolutely beautiful, and game requires a bit of skill. Dont listen to the reviews saying they cant load the game, all you need to do is update your game center account in settings, by changing your profile picture. The only problem is once you complete the game, you lose the desire to play it. So we recommend this game to people who like hopping on and out of a game every now and then.
We were hesitant to buy because of reviews. Its working great on iPhone xsmax. It has a map system like FTL. We bumped up frame rate to 60fps runs super smooth. A lot of interesting upgrade choices we recommend Ive been eyeing this game for months and finally decided to go for it Im glad we did. Update…several days in ZERO crashes.
This game is by far the best game we have ever played its just not getting enough updates to keep everything interesting it would be nice to see new items or traits our maybe like a survival mode were the waves just get harder and harder in tell you lose or new types of units like Calvary or axeman would spice the game up making it more fun to play which would make us really happy and you just see games like this.
This game is great but we think it could be much more with the given mechanics for example what if there was a mode were you played as the Vikings and deployed ships to attack islands. We would also love a sandbox mode with infinite amounts of units on both sides. Finally we ask for a greater variety of units such as cavalry which could only attack while moving or musketeers that could shoot through shields but take a long time to reload.
So as far as we have been playing the game has ran completely fine. No crashes no freezing during gameplay. We are on an iPhone7 so take from that what you will. But the game has been everything that we wanted! Its addictive, very addictive. If you like strategy games you can find yourself in this game hours at a time! Definitely worth it. But make sure you have a iPhone7 (or a relatively new iPhone6plus) or up to play this game. It does take a little bit to play.
Great game needs to add an endless horde mode where you can have every character help you and fight.
This is one of the view payed mobile games that are worth far more than what you pay for. The actual strategy isnt over complicated, yet is still complex, and we love how the game makes you adapt your troops to each and every unique island. The fact you have to make quick decisions to both keep your commanders alive and your houses protected also adds a stressful aspect which is counterbalanced by the wonderful and innocent looking art style. Our one critique would be the somewhat short campaign, but with multiple difficulties, randomly unique islands, and achievements to unlock, it has pretty decent replay value as well.
We have this game on our computer and we love it but the issue we have on mobile is the fact we cant zoom in as much as we want. We have no issues with it crashing or anything of that matter. Im very glad this game came to mobile :).
Love this game, but recently the app gets stuck on the loading screen and we cant play anymore :(.
Bad north is a really fun strategy game. You really have to consider lots of different possibilities in order to win. The game itself if fine but for some reason it kept kicking us out after we got to a certain level. We dont know if its a bug but we hope they fix it. Other than that, its definitely worth the price.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2.00.18
- Size: 339.64 MB
- iOS: 11.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, IT, JA, KO, PT, RU, ZH, ES, ZH, TR
- Content Advisory: Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: Raw Fury AB
Last updated: 17th December 2020 | Genre: Strategy, Action | Developer: Raw Fury AB