Each turn in Northgard Battlegrounds, you place buildings, assign workers and spend what your Viking village earns, and then your warband fights another player’s clan on its own. Funday Games and Shiro Unlimited released it in Early Access on Steam on October 27, 2026, for PC only. It costs $14.99, cut 10% to $13.49 until November 10. Owners of Northgard, Backpack Battles or The King is Watching get another 10% off through Steam bundles.
Shiro Unlimited is the publishing label of Shiro Games, which made Northgard and co-developed this one. Funday Games made Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, so building a faster spin-off inside an existing game’s world is familiar work. Here the source is Northgard’s colony management, cut into PvP rounds.
How a Northgard village becomes an army
It is an auto-battler, which is a strategy game where you build the army and the fight plays itself. Most of your decisions happen before a blade is drawn. Each turn you expand your territory, build or upgrade structures and put workers on them, and every choice pulls between soldiers now and an economy that pays later. Adjacency bonuses, which reward putting the right buildings side by side, mean where a camp goes matters as much as what it is.
At the end of each round, your warband of warriors and mythic beasts fights a rival clan. The PvP is asynchronous, which means you face other players’ clans without playing against them live, so nobody waits on anyone. More than 100 Fate cards shape a run. They grant blessings from the Norse gods, change your strategy and summon legendary creatures, and they are the main reason no two villages should look alike.
The bundle discount names its audience. Northgard owners are the obvious target, and Backpack Battles and The King is Watching share the list, so Shiro knows which spreadsheet you already keep.
At least six months of Early Access, by the studio’s estimate
The Steam page expects Early Access to last “for at least 6 months” and lists the plan for 1.0: more clans, warchiefs, buildings and unit mechanics, plus balance and polish. The price will go up at full release, by an amount that depends on what gets added. It launched in English, French, German, Spanish, Russian and Simplified Chinese.
The early record is split. A day after launch, Steam users rated it Mixed, with 58% of 96 reviews positive. That is a small sample, and auto-battlers tend to be judged on balance, which is the thing Early Access exists to fix.
If you like building more than fighting, buy it before the 10% discount ends on Tuesday, November 10. The price only goes up from there.
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