Insider Tip: Northgard
A somewhat hidden indie gem on Steam is Northgard by developer Shiro Games. The game has never really been huge but has a loyal player base of several thousand players who play regularly.
You play as Viking clans fighting for survival and victory in the realm of Northgard. You need to scout and settle tiles around your starting point to get more building space and expand further.
While the clans share most buildings, each faction has some unique features and its own orientation:
- some are pure military clans with special units and bonuses in combat
- others focus on support and teamwork, providing everyone with feast supplies and resources
- yet others want to accumulate fame as quickly as possible or have specialized in trade to fulfill alternative victory conditions
Northgard offers both a detailed campaign and skirmish matches as well as expeditions where you receive bonuses for your clan through several missions that your clan normally doesn’t possess. The game is continuously being expanded with new clans and features.
For some time now, there has also been the Bifröst mode, where you must complete various maps in a rogue-lite campaign in co-op or solo with special modifiers. In the end, you will face an MMORPG-like boss battle.
Bonus: Plague Inc
A somewhat different game from what you might know from the list is Plague Inc. Here, you play as a disease whose goal is to exterminate humanity. The idea might be somewhat tasteless in light of Covid-19 today, but the game is much older and its principle is quite interesting.
Your success depends on whether you start as a virus, bacterium, or parasite, what symptoms you develop, and when you decide to mutate so strongly that you become truly deadly.
In essence, your goal is world domination, or more precisely, its destruction. The simulation is so good that even the American Center for Disease Control has spoken with the creators.
Plague Inc is on this list because you can not only play it on PC with Windows, Mac, and Linux, but also on Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch, and even on Android and iOS if you are looking for a good strategy game for mobile.
If you want to explore a bit beyond the strategy genre, we have summarized all the important MMOs and multiplayer games that will be released this year in our big release list: New MMOs and Multiplayer Games 2026: These Releases You Can Look Forward To
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