Last updated on January 4th, 2026 at 02:04 am
Raiders of the North Sea – Strategy Game Review
Raiders of the North Sea is a Strategy/Board game from Dire Wolf Digital LLC, first launched in 31st July 2019.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 597+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Raiders of the North Sea Stand Out
“Raiders is mounting a serious challenge as one of the best mobile board games out there.” – Kotaku
“The digital version does a brilliant job of recreating the feel of the board game. Smartly designed, with some wonderful visuals and enthralling entertainment, well worth plundering. (5/5 stars)” – Pocket Tactics
“As it stands, this is one of the best all around apps out there…. A beautiful digital implementation, the game jumps to life on your mobile device.” – Pixelated Cardboard
It's Raiding Season! Plunder your way to Viking adventure in the digital adaptation of the award-winning worker-placement board game!
In Raiders of the North Sea, players assemble a crew and outfit a longboat to raid settlements for gold and fame. Impress your Chieftain in glorious battle and win your place among the legends of the North Sea!
It's Raiding Season!
Assemble a crew and outfit a longboat to raid settlements for gold and fame! Impress your Chieftain in glorious battle and win your place among the legends of the North Sea in this digital adaptation of the award-winning board game!
The Official Digital Adaptation of the Award-Winning Board Game!
Plunder your way to adventure as Raiders of the North Sea brings the strategy and fun of the hit tabletop game to digital life!
Deep Worker Placement Strategy!
Each turn you'll harvest resources twice: first by placing one worker, and then by recovering a different one!
Use your resources to hire a Viking crew and outfit your longboat!
Send your crew on daring raids to win gold and glory!
Survive battles with the legendary Valkyrie…or honor your Chieftain in a glorious death!
Amass Plunder and make sacrificial Offerings to win!
Many Ways to Raid!
Turn-Based Strategy lets you play at your own pace!
Learn the Oars in a full tutorial that teaches you the strategy of the game!
Lead Your People in single-player games against AI opponents!
Rise to Greatness in multiplayer battles!
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Raiders of the North Sea is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 29th September 2025
Recent improvements include:
General bug fixes and compatibility updates.
Download & Availability
Raiders of the North Sea is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Raiders of the North Sea 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:
So base game is great, but the AI is either skewed with them starting with a TON of armor or too easy. There is no in between. The skew of giving them armor instead of attacking fortresses early and getting the early resource early seems like an easy fix. Was lazy on the developers part. The AI will have enough gold, power and provisions and not take out fortresses. Really silly as the game otherwise is beautiful and very relaxing to play. Out of all the ways to artificially make up for the AI weakness, iron would be our last pick. Finally, it would have been easy to add at least a few of the expansion features that makes the game better. For example, when you beat a spot by 10 points etc. You should get some extra points. Would be nice to have some new cards as well. Again, doesnt require much development at all. However, like most online games, they NEVER get improved. They dont realize that for such minimal development word of mouth is powerful in this industry. They just figure why spend good money after bad without realizing in this situation, like many other, is takes money to make. Money. Just poor business decision. Didnt need to add full expansions. We wonder if the devs actually are even board gamers sometimes or work with the design of th3 games at ALL.
Im a big fan of Garphill Games and Im having a blast playing this. You should consider making a Raiders of Scythia version.
This is great if you know how to play. Learning via the app is not ideal. They need to make the tracks visible and add the expansions.
Im a little late in finding out about garphill games. We picked up the board game a while back and we love playing it. Then we found it here and now our lives are complete. Well almost. If you guys would go ahead and include the expansions, and Explorers of the North Sea and its expansion, and Shipwrights too, thatd be great.
This is the best euro board game adaptation on there. When are the expansions going to be implemented.
Im such a fan of the board game. We love how great this one works. The campaign mode is a pretty cool twist and has some fun challenges. Highly recommended.
This game is ported beautifully and perfectly in this app! Couldnt be happier.
Really love the app. Now if we can only beat the campaign.
We give the app a 5.0. Everything works flawlessly and Ive never had a problem with it. Ive never played the board game though we own it but Ive played many games of this. Its a great game and the computer players are pretty good. Hopefully expansions will come out. We would also like to see some options for this ap game and the board game that you can trigger on or off such as hidden plunder on each settlement. You dont know whats underneath before attacking or in the case of this app could be just a ? Instead of gold iron or cows and they are not revealed until you commit to the attack. The only glitch Ive experienced is the computer will often re roll dice it doesnt need to and frequently even the rolling the higher of the two.
We give the app a 5.0. Everything works flawlessly and Ive never had a problem with it. Ive never played the board game though we own it but Ive played many games of this. Its a great game and the computer players are pretty good. Hopefully expansions will come out. We would also like to see some options for the game that you can trigger on or off such as hidden plunder on each settlement where are you dont know whats underneath or in the case of this app could be just. ? Instead of gold iron or cows and they are not revealed until you commit to the attack.
Ive never played the board game but Im buying it because of this app. Great implementation. So many board game apps miss the mark and this one did great.
Wonderful digital game that plays great. Our only complaint is the challenge difficulty for some missions is crazy which has the AI keep kicking our butt.
The load times for our games are by far the most frustrating aspect of this game. If this was fixed and we could actually load games at a decent pace we would love it.
This is a very enjoyable and faithful adaptation of the board game. Our only complaint is that there is no ability to take back actions while still in a persons turn. This would be a nice feature in future updates.
We havent tried online. Great digital version of the game. We thought it would be clunky to go from village to the north but its smooth. Our only complaint is, and we could be missing it, we wish there was a way to look at the cards in our hand for abilities as a reminder. We also wouldve liked a summary interface on what opponents have for cards and resources but thats small.
Super awesome game. Just so frustrating that we cant play this game in airplane mode.
We discovered by accident that you can see what a card does in your hand or what one of your hired people do by tapping and holding on it. This is not obvious. Why cant we just click on our cards or on the people weve hired to see them all.
Wife and we play digital board games together regularly. We enjoy raiders expect online games drop 2-3 times each game. Recently couldnt reconnect, game just disappeared. App is worse than worthless when this happens – actively a negative experience.
Online does not work at all anymore. Real shame as this is a great app when it works.
Some of the features dont work, primarily the Valhalla strength or Longhouse rewards dont trigger after you sacrifice a character unless it is an immediate reward like VP but overall the game is a good combination of board game and digital format. The music, small animations are fun and bring the game to life without losing the charm and feel of the actual board game version. Id like to see more small character animations for other cards like when the female warrior claps her shield as it really brings the character to life. Also please tweak or add more options to undo a choice mid selection or finesse the touchscreen capability as sometimes the app (or maybe its iPad/iOS?) selects the wrong item. We also have Root and seriously you guys, digital wolf is the absolute best partner in bringing board games to life online. Now please tweak the perks, and add all the expansions. ;).
Great App, wish the expansions were available.
The gameplay and art are great. We enjoy the mechanics of the game even though its just the base game, no expansions. But trying to play asynchronously with three others is rough because notifications arent reliable and it takes waaaay too long to load the game even on a relatively modern device like an iPhone XR. The goal would be to open the game and complete a turn in a minute between other tasks, but the load time of 30-45 seconds makes that difficult.
The game is well designed and a lot of fun. However, when playing the campaign, we got stuck halfway thru. After completing the first two rounds, we could not advance past the third. We had saved the game about midway through the third round. When we went back to pick it up, the program would not let us load the saved game, it just got stuck. So we backed out and tried to start the game over, same result. If they fix this bug, our rating would probably go up.
We really love the game. We play by ourselves and with friends from across the country. Would love to be able to play the campaign scenarios more broadly. Ive had a couple of glitches and the support function doesnt work to get help. In general an app worth the price.
Used to work well. After the recent update when we try to play the AI it asks us if we want to continue our previous game, dont have one. But regardless both options crash the app. Making it unplayable.
The computer always seems to have the upper hand and always gains more of what ever is needed to win the game. Not what we call a good game.
An outstanding game thats so cool we had buy the actual board game. The interface is alive and vibrant, and the gameplay is strategic and fun. Our favorite iPad game in years.
Yeah we said it. With the music and animations, this app gives a better play experience than the physical game. The only things Im hurting for are the digital expansions! We hope theyre in development.
This is one of our favorite board games of all time. The app is just as fun as playing the tabletop version. We are very impressed with it. Now please please please make the expansions for this game, it would make it even more awesome.
We love Raiders as a board game. Its original take on worker placement and fantastic art make it a joy to play. The developers did a marvelous job with the app version. Im hoping that they add the expansions soon, because Ill be among the first to buy them. Thanks for the great work.
This is an ideal implementation of making a digital version of a board game. Well done! Cant wait to see this developer finish the digital version of Root another game we really want to play and think will be great digitally. Need any play testers for that effort.
What a fun game this is! It isnt too heavy for iOS but is definitely not light either. And we were pleasantly surprised that it hasnt been too hard to find online opponents for async games.
We played the board game version many times and we are a fan of the game. The app replicates the game perfectly and provides so much more. The art, which is a huge part of the theme, is beautifully rendered. Even more, the attention to detail adds to the thematic value as town buildings come to life when visited by a worker, your crew has a battle cry and the ships moving along the water simply put a smile on your face. The campaign mode is very enjoyable. Game flow is smooth as the app plays faster than the board version, which is great. If you enjoy the board game, you should have this app. Looking forward to seeing expansions.
We do love cardboard board games & iOS board games. This one is brilliant. So easy to learn & so easy to understand. Very nice graphics & sounds. Youve got a great big board game that you can play for as little or long as you like. We cant say thank you enough. You nailed it & hit it out of the park. Great job Developers & thank you.
Updated review: Could not play on phone but developer response helped fix issue.. A simple reboot of phone fixed it.
Tenho o board game fsico e esta verso us surpreendeu positivamente. O modo campanha e a possibilidade de jogo solo (contra a IA) trazem novas opes. Recomendo.
Wow. Just wow. We own a lot of board game apps and this is own and this one is not just eye candy but it has amazing gameplay. Great port of a great game. This game just raised the bar. If Architects of the West Kingdom has the same quality, it will be an instant buy for many people.
Problem fixed – needed to wipe iPad and restore from backup to solve Game Center issue. Update: Game Center issue returned. Devs were kind enough to give us a code to play on wifes iPad. In all fairness, Direwolf support responded multiple times to assist, and that alone makes the $10 worth it. Our original rating was 5 stars and we wouldve just corrected our recent warning but for some reason, Apple wont let us in to our own review. Typical of Apple. Sigh…. Anyway, great game and yes, you can upgrade to iOS 13. Seems our issue was not widely shared, probably just a corrupted install of iOS. Enjoy the game and like he, pray they publish all the expansions and Architects.
Good adaptation. Needs adjustable AI difficulty for solo campaign play for casual players.
Really great app. Only two suggestions to improve: -add an Undo button for every action -please add the expansions!!! Id be willing to pay for an in app purchase for the expansions. Thanks.
Good game fundamentally. Online version does not work. We tried many times and could not complete a game. Please debug.
But it is nigh near impossible to give them feedback. The in-game feedback feature always fails with an error saying you have a problem with your internet connection. And that crashes everything in the game. So we leave it at the error message telling us about our bad net connection and go to our other online games and none of them have any problems accessing our bad net connection. Obviously the game does something wrong internally. We went to Renegade games and they had 3 ways to contact them. Twitter, Instagram, and email. We do not participate in either Instagram nor Twitter for personal reasons. That left email. Great. We select it and it brings up a list of email accounts. We select our icloud account and it wants our user is and apple id to login. We are reluctant, but figure we can reset our password once we leave our password, but they try to set up a new icloud account on our ipad which of course fails. We try again and it fails again. Fine. We then use our other email provider, giving them our id and password along with the emails server name. They cant connect that way either. Jeimeny Chricket! Our final try was a link to the game designer. We thought maybe we could get our feedback to him. But the link was bogus! It went to a non-existent page or a broken link. Thanks Renegade Games! This lack of wanting feedback on their part knocked our review from a 5 to a 3! All this and we never even told you what our feedback about the game was going to be.
We have played for a few days, and although the game is good, we cant get over how often we have to crash the game and reopen it because it lagged or froze itself. We would expect this kind of behavior from a free game, but for a paid game its quite disappointing.
Just got an iphone 11 and bought this game and 30 seconds into the tutorial we find out we cannot activate nor drag our worker.
The game looks and generally plays really well… As long as you're solo. Playing online with friends connected whether through iOS or Steam is sub-optimal. It has crashed on all of us repeatedly and we can't rejoin the active game. It ruins the experience. UPDATE: the developers responded to our review asking us to send an email to their support. We did and the EMAIL FAILED because their domain is offline. Get your act together, Direwolf.
The game is good and plays very well if you just play solo or campaign. But the online game is a different story. We havent been able to finish any online game. It suddenly freezes and the game is over. Very frustrating. This game is not cheap and for that money we expect a product that works and we have fun with. Please improve the online experience.
We love all the North Sea, and west kingdom games. But as an app its kind of horrible. Definitely not worth 10$. We really wanted to love it and put off buying it for a while because of the price. But playing the app just feels like a chore compared to other board game apps.
We cant seem to play it. We have an iPhone 10 max and the game wont go past the first screen. We rebooted the phone and let it run for 10 minutes and nothing. $10 poof gone.
The game just spins at the beginning and never actually loads. Waste of $9.99.
Cannot get past the developers logos.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.4.8
- Size: 259.47 MB
- iOS: 12.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, IT, ES
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: Dire Wolf Digital LLC
Last updated: 29th September 2025 | Genre: Strategy, Board | Developer: Dire Wolf Digital LLC