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"Simple Pleasures of Valheim"

Posted: 09 March, 2021

I'm sure it's not escaped your attention, but an early access game about vikings in the afterlife is selling by the bucket-load. 5 million, last time I looked, and I doubt it'll struggle to double that number before it's done.

I've been playing Valheim since release, and I'm in absolute awe of it. It's been created over a couple of years, by a tiny team -- ostensibly a single developer for most of that time -- to little or no fanfare, and with hardly any coverage on Twitter or the traditional press. That just doesn't happen very often, so it's worth looking at.

It's Minecraft with some goals, some lore, and a scaling threat. Except it's not. It's its own thing, with just enough nods and winks to make everything instantly recognisable. More importantly, it ups-the-ante in ways anyone who grew up with Minecraft would want: threats increase in difficulty the more active players there are on the server, and when you kill bosses, the whole world levels up a bit.

But it's not a difficult game. You're not going to keel over and die just because you've not eaten. And when you do die, you can walk back to your grave and recover your items. When you tear-down something you've built, you get most of its components back. Simple QoL improvements, but they all make the difference.

Obviously, it's far from finished, can lag at the "base", and it has some incredibly clunky elements if you stop and look at things in any detail. But its already ticking enough boxes that most of us on the server are playing for a couple of hours a day.

I honestly don't think that I've spent this much time on an unfinished game (that wasn't my own)... since... well, Minecraft!

If you're in the market for a cracking little time-waster, then I can't praise this initial release enough. Very excited about what the future brings!