Independent Game Development

Data Vikings

We are an extremely small studio making games we actually want to play — not games designed to maximize revenue, chase trends, or win graphical benchmarks. Just games worth playing.

// What we believe

Fun beats fidelity, every time
Deep systems over cinematic spectacle
Small teams make honest games
Commercial success is a bonus, not the goal
If we wouldn't play it, we won't ship it
~1
People in the studio
Hours lost to playtesting
// Est. whenever we started

Who We Are

Honest
Games
From
Small
Hands

Data Vikings exists because the games we wanted to play weren't being made. The studio is about as small as a studio can be — which means no committees, no publishers, no focus groups, and no one telling us to add a battle pass.

We make games we want to play, not necessarily ones that will prove to be commercially successful or graphically perfect.

That's not a disclaimer. It's a design philosophy. When the person making the game is also the person playing it obsessively at midnight, something different happens. The rough edges get filed down. The systems get deeper. The fun gets ruthlessly prioritized over everything that merely looks impressive in a trailer.

We're not chasing a market segment. We're not optimizing for a demographic. We're building the kinds of games that defined a genre before the genre forgot what made it good — and we're doing it without apology.

If our games sell well, that's wonderful. If they find a small, passionate audience who plays them for hundreds of hours, that's just as good. If they end up being exactly what one particular kind of player was looking for — the kind of player who remembers when strategy games trusted you to think — then we've done our job.

// Games

What We're Making

Our Games

SS

// Turn-Based Space 4X

In Active Development

Shattered
Spheres

A turn-based 2D space 4X strategy game that strips empire-building back to what matters — exploration, hard decisions, and the slow satisfaction of watching your civilization reach across a living galaxy. No micromanagement bloat. No spreadsheet required. Eight distinct races. Two paths to victory. Planets that actually move.

Turn-Based 4X Strategy Space 2D Solo Dev

How We Work

The Data Vikings Credo

01

Play First

Every feature gets built because it makes the game more fun to play — not because it looks good on a feature list, a store page, or a pitch deck.

02

Depth Over Flash

We'll take a system that makes you think over a shader that makes you stare every single time. Graphics age. Good mechanics stay good.

03

Honest Scope

Small studios that overpromise ship broken games. We build what we can build well, ship it when it's ready, and grow it from there.

04

No Dark Patterns

No battle passes. No loot boxes. No artificial friction designed to extract money. You buy the game. You get the game. Full stop.

05

Genre Respect

The games that inspired us were great for a reason. We study them, honor what they got right, and only deviate when we have something genuinely better to offer.

06

Player Trust

Players are smart. They don't need to be hand-held through every decision or protected from complexity. We make games that respect their intelligence.

Get In Touch

Find Us

We're a small operation, but we read everything. Whether you have feedback, a bug to report, or just want to talk about old-school 4X games — the Discord is the best place to find us.