When you need a pause from clambering over mossy hillocks and skewering things with swords, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla offers up Orlog – a game of beans, bowls, and aggressive dice-chucking that’s now set to make the jump into the real-world with a physical version next year.
Throughout Valhalla, protagonist Eivor encounters characters only too happy to break out Orlog, and players that accept must attempt to whittle down their opponent’s lives by rolling symbols on dice to either attack, block, or gain a God Favour – used to modify basic rolls at the end of each round. Dice can be thrown up to three times per round, and players can select which symbols they wish to keep between rolls, bringing a layer of strategy to proceedings.
Although there’s evidence to suggest real-world vikings did enjoy dice games, Orlog is actually an original creation designed specifically for Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. As co-development game director Benoit Richer explained to Eurogamer’s board-game-focussed sister site Dicebreaker, Ubisoft’s research failed to uncover any authentic viking game rules, so the goal with Orlog was to create something “that would be ‘credible’ rather than historically accurate”.
