How an old idea, inspiration from old strategy games, and a toolbox full of AI helpers turned into my Viking strategy saga.

A Seed Planted Years Ago

Growing up glued to what I consider classics, like Kingdoms of England, Utopia, and the original Civilization, I fell hard for empire‑building at a thinking pace. At the same time, weekend marathons of Risk and Axis & Allies taught me that strategy shines brightest when there's banter between turns.

That marriage of deep decision‑making and social table‑talk became the design North Star. Viking Dominion needed rules you could learn in minutes, turns long enough for real‑life interruptions, and a chat window that invited side‑conversations to bloom.

As for the setting—I'm Norwegian, and longships, sagas, and midnight‑sun coastlines are baked into my DNA. Vikings felt like the most honest and fun skin to wrap around the mechanics.

Real life, lack of designing and musical skills (and a stack of other side projects) kept pushing the idea down the backlog—until the recent wave of AI tools made solo game development feel a lot less solo.

Building with (and around) AI

Visuals. Every crest, unit portrait, and mist-shrouded coastline you see in Viking Dominion was born from text-to-image prompts. I iterated until the sprites felt Viking without sliding into clichés. A few resource icons still come straight from OpenMoji, because sometimes why re-invent the wheel.

Audio. The game’s low-fi ambient music and sound effects were synthesized the same way. I coaxed my favourite AI audio generator to spit out raw takes until they sounded like something you'd hear echoing across a fjord.

Code assistance. ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, Cursor and friends sat in the passenger seat the entire journey—helping scaffold UI components, catch edge-cases, and, occasionally, gas-lighting me about CSV syntax. The trick, I learned, is to keep your commits tiny and your guard up. AI can sprint, but it still trips over its own shoelaces.

Human lessons. AI shaved months off production, but it never replaced the design gut-checks: Is this fun? Does this icon read at a glance? Will a first-time player understand why they just lost a battle? Those questions still needed a human in the loop—preferably one hopped up on coffee at 1 a.m.

What Makes Viking Dominion Tick

Viking Dominion is a turn-based strategy game for 4–8 players (with CPUs that behave surprisingly like real allies – and real back-stabbers). Turns can be as leisurely as 48 hours or as frantic as 2 minutes, so you can play your turn on your lunch break for weeks or binge an entire grand campaign in an hour or less.

• Two distinct maps. Europe offers a sprawling continental grind; Lofoten is compact, naval-heavy, and perfect for guerrilla longship raids. More maps may be coming!
• Cross-device by design. Your name + PIN is your passport—start and check-in on mobile, think and finish on desktop.
• Single-click diplomacy. Propose an alliance, break it, or trigger Ragnarok to nuke the whole match when negotiations fail spectacularly.

A 60-Second Strategy Primer

1. Respect the timer. Miss your window and you're out. Activate notifications (or risk learning this the hard way).
2. Scout before you sprawl. Fog of war hides resource clusters; rushing blind can mean gifting trolls to your neighbour.
3. Play the terrain. Trolls treat mountains like plains; longships laugh at shorelines. Draft accordingly.
4. Leverage alliances—carefully. Allied territory counts toward victory, but breaking a pact freezes your army for a turn while leaving your ex-friend free to swing the axe.
5. Neutral land is momentum. Capturing empty regions lets certain units chain-move—perfect for late-game break-throughs.

Why 'Casual' Doesn't Mean 'Shallow'

The interface stays minimal—everything important fits in a collapsible sidebar—yet under the hood you're juggling economy, tech-tree-lite upgrades, terrain bonuses, and the delicate egos of AI jarls. Veterans of classic strategy games will feel at home; newcomers won't drown in tool-tips.

Ready to Claim Your Seat in Valhalla?

Viking Dominion is live, free, and updated whenever I find spare cycles (latest build: v1.3.11). Grab some friends—or bait some CPUs—and see if you can snatch dominion before someone blows the horn.

Other experiments from my garage

Below are a few of the tools and toys I've shipped recently—some powered by AI, others crafted the old-fashioned way.

• SnapFile – friction-free file sharing.
• CredShare – secure secret hand-offs for teams.
• Skillia – a lightweight skill-&-project tracker.
• Battleship & Space Adventure – classic games, modern glow-ups.

More projects—and the source for many—live on my GitHub.

Thanks for reading. Feedback, bug reports, and Viking memes are always welcome!

Oh - and if you didn't catch it - this article is written by an AI and lightly modified by me.