VIKINGS ON TRAMPOLINES

A good Viking always bounces back

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the ones that endure, and Vikings On Trampolines is a case in point. The concept started bouncing around inside the head of D-Pad Studio co-founder Jo-Remi Madsen 20 years ago – but, with a desire for accessibility at its core, has arguably only become more relevant since. “This is essentially a game I designed for my little sister,” Madsen says. “We used to play games like Mario Kart and Smash Bros and she would quit early because she was like, ‘I can’t understand the controls’, so I wanted to make a game where the only control used is the joystick.”

Back then, Madsen built a prototype, and another a decade later when he and D-Pad’s other co-founder, Simon Stafsnes Andersen, decided that the idea still had legs. But development halted as their focus turned to Owlboy, and only restarted in earnest two years ago. In all that time, though, the singlestick control method remained a key feature – all you need to keep your cartoon Viking rebounding off a row of mini trampolines. The question was what could be done to expand on the initial implementation of the concept, a kind of Smash Bros-style versus mode. The answer, we discover as we sit down for a guided tour, is a heck of a lot.