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Northgard

Shiro Games

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Quick read

Northgard is a compact Viking RTS: expand a clan, survive winter, contest victory conditions.

What kind of game is it?

Real-time strategy with city-builder winter pressure. Matches are shorter than a classic 4X and denser than a pure builder.

Who is it for?

For players who prefer a short clan war that still has to survive winter.

With friends

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How it plays

Loop: Expanding a base
Sessions: Medium sessions
Progression: Campaign
Players: Solo or co-op
Structure: Systemic
Tone: Epic · Challenging

Game DNA

What playing it feels like, out of 100. Our reading, separate from Steam reviews.

Progression80
Estimate
Social55
Estimate

Key Steam facts

Steam store figures, checked 13 Sept 2026.

Release

released

2017-02-22

Review score

85.3%

Checked 17 Aug 2026.

Steam positive percent.

Review count

68,738

Checked 13 Sept 2026.

Store price

$9.79

Checked 13 Sept 2026.

Languages

Demo

Early Access

Next Fest

Players

Single-player and co-op

How many people play Northgard?

Estimates from public Steam data, not figures from the studio. Ranges, not exact numbers.

Estimated copies

1.7M – 3.8M

Steam reviews × 25 to 55.

Estimated gross revenue

$8.4M – $30M

Copies × current price × 50–80% (sales, regional prices). Before Steam's cut, refunds and tax.

All-time peak players

20,083

Most people playing at the same moment, per SteamCharts.

Average players, Aug 2026

1,187

Peak that month: 2,069.

Median playtime

50.2 h

Half of 300 recent reviewers played 17.5–179.3 h. 3% under 2 h.

Players over time

Sept 2023Aug 2026

Where the players are

Languages of the last 300 Steam reviews. A proxy for regions, not a country split.

English37%
Russian19%
Simplified Chinese12%
French7%
Polish4%
Portuguese (Brazil)4%

Steam data checked 4 Oct 2026

What makes it different?

Clans change the opening, not just the skin. Winter is a shared clock that forces economy choices AAAs in the genre largely abandoned.

Core mechanics

How it scores

The fantasy: Mastery and Survival. Our scores out of 100, separate from Steam reviews.

Strategy depthEstimate

84 / 100

Related games

Nearby games. Not always a direct substitute.

Shared: Base building, Colony sim, Management, City builder

Prison Architect

Prison Architect is a management game where the product is a facility that can riot if the toilets and the regime disagree. A census is the HP bar, and the yard is a plan you will defend on the news.

Open →

Shared: Base building, Colony sim, City builder, Strategy

They Are Billions

They Are Billions is a colony RTS that ends when the horde finds the hole you left in the wall — a campaign of postponing that minute.

Open →

Shared: Base building, Strategy

Raft

Raft is an ocean craft loop: expand the floater, dive, do not get sharked. The base is a square of wood that grows, and the island is a stop you chose with a sail.

Open →

Shared: Base building, Colony sim, Management, City builder

Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress is a colony sim: you dig a fortress into a generated world and manage dwarves whose moods, needs and mistakes write the story.

Open →

Genre / subgenre

Steam genre: RTS.

Related rankings

Related teardown

Northgard — launch intelligence

A Norse-themed real-time strategy game in a genre deserted by AAA publishers. Launched in Early Access in 2017, 1.0 in 2018, then seven years of disciplined DLC expansion — 5 million cumulative copies, most of them after the initial launch.

Read the launch analysis →

Sources

Store price checked 13 Sept 2026.

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