"Moving on Up" update is now live for Trolls vs Vikings: Reborn

Finally, the new content patch “Moving on Up” goes live! We’re also introducing our very first live sale on the project—so for those of you on the fence, this might be a great opportunity to grab the game at a discount.

The patch then took a little longer than planned… Sorry about that! My whole family and I went down with a nasty variant of Covid, so the last two weeks were pretty much spent in bed. No fun!

In the meantime, the team’s been busy—and as you may have seen, we even announced and launched the demo of our upcoming city-builder game, Life Below, last week. Exciting times for us in Megapop, but like I mentioned in the last update, we’re fully committed to keeping new content flowing into Trolls Reborn!

SO, WHAT IS THIS PATCH ALL ABOUT?

First of all, there’s a brand-new area: The Magic Forest!

I think Mikael Noguchi (Art Director on Trolls) did a fantastic job creating something ethereal and otherworldly. It’s colourful and sizzling—very much in line with the Trolls aesthetic. Hope you’ll like it! (We’ve already drawn two more playfield backgrounds coming up in future patches!)

NOW, ONTO GAMEPLAY:

This patch adds five new levels, each one ramping up the challenge. They’re all centered around something uniquely Trolls: moving units (hence the name “Moving on Up”).

I’ve wanted to create more levels based around this gameplay type for a long time. Now we’ve done it—so please let us know what you think!

The setup is that a small band of Trolls is on the move through the magical forest. Each level gives you a specific loadout of movable units. Thor and I worked to make sure each level builds on the last—you’ll see some units rotate in and out, and the Moonstone and Spell loadouts shift a bit from level to level. There’s an intended sense of progression and escalating complexity—and hopefully, they’re all fun to play!

Fingar also added support for setting spell amounts per level, overriding player setups. Honestly, I’m not sure why we didn’t do this earlier—it gives us much more control to fine-tune specific challenges. You’ll see how it works in the new special mission!

As for difficulty... well, that depends on your skills.

I promised to go overboard with the complexity, and I think we delivered. On the fifth and final level, we tested some borderline impossible setups. I personally tried one variant like 15 times before admitting: “Okay... this is impossible.” So, we nerfed it slightly and added a couple more spells—because when something is too hard, it stops being fun. Now the final level should still be brutal—but beatable (for the best of you!).

Personally, I can blitz through the first three levels on double speed, but once I hit level 4 and 5, I really need to slow down and think things through. Now we look forward to hearing how you experience them—that’ll help us fine-tune future balancing.

The goal here is to push for super-active, super-tactical gameplay, where you’re constantly moving units around and coordinating them tightly. I don’t know any other tower defense game that leans into this the way Trolls does, so it felt great to double down on what makes us uniquely us.

BEYOND CONTENT: BUGS, POLISH AND UPGRADES

The extra time while I was out did lead to some positives—Fingar (our lead coder) managed to squash a ton of bugs and clean up some long-standing issues.

Here’s the list:

• Improved upscaling for a bunch of UI sprites
• Fixed issue where Mudwrestling achievement wouldn’t unlock
• Various localization fixes
• Spells can now be set per level (overriding player setups)
• UI layout fixes to support more languages
• Updated card graphics
• Updated level preview UI (default levels and Valhalla)
• Improved low-res graphics in the world map
• Added safety checks for Loki-scripted event in Eric boss fight
• Old star graphics now hidden
• Improved button highlights (main menu, world map, panels)
• Returning from a side quest now takes you back to the side quest menu (instead of world map)
• Updated art for world map’s Rune Totem buttons
• Units in victory screen now sorted by class (boss on top)
• Chinese, Taiwanese, and Portuguese localizations added (going live in next patches; currently in testing)

There are more tweaks and fixes in the backlog—and as always, if you spot something we’ve missed, let us know and we’ll look into it!

THAT'S IT FOR NOW!

As a summary I’m really happy with how these new levels turned out, and had a LOT of fun playing and tweaking them together with Thor (gameplay designer on Trolls Reborn). I’m obviously biased—but I really hope you’ll enjoy them as much as we do.

Now it’s up to you to judge.

As for what’s next—we’re already working on the next patch. Much of the base content is ready, but it’ll take a few weeks before it hits testing.

Let us know how we’re doing—so we can keep making Trolls vs Vikings: Reborn better for y’all.

All the best,
Jørgen Tharaldsen
Game Director, Trolls vs Vikings: Reborn