It seemed that for the longest time, we were trapped in “early-access” hell. Copy and pasted titles were dropping almost weekly all promising the same kind of experience: an open-world crafting/survival experience with friends. The concepts were intriguing and gameplay footage would get enough people interested in perhaps throwing it on their wish lists or perhaps even risking it and purchasing the game outright. But there was always one little tag on its Steam page, one little category that all of them had belonged to. Early access.
Early access is a great concept. It gives us the chance to support and feed creators for the promise of something better tomorrow while we pay less today. It’s not a hard concept to get your head around and in the right circumstances, it’s even a pretty good deal. But then, after a while, it felt like they were just getting worse. They were coming out with less and less polish, horribly broken and unplayable with delayed and stagnant updates and patches. There’s a game-breaking glitch that causes your character to get constantly trapped between two trees and somehow take fall damage until they die? Don’t worry player, we hear you and we’re happy to announce that our next patch will finally improve the lighting inside the tavern!
They’re not supposed to be finished when they’re made available to the public, but you should be able to play them, and by play them I mean sink some serious time in, not play for three hours and think “Yeah there’s not much to do now but it could be cool someday.” My advice: if you come away from a game and that’s your first thought, request a refund. They don’t usually get to that level and you’ll have just another program taking up space in your Steam library that you never touch.
All of this is why I’m not sure why I’ve been loving Valheim so much. Is it because I’ve slowly become so disillusioned with the survival/crafting genre and broken early access snoozefests that I’ve needed something resembling an interesting experience like a dying man needs water? Or is it just because the game is really good? My first steps in the world were filled with the same amount of trepidation I always feel when booting up a new game of this genre. As I picked up rocks and sticks and got into a couple of fistfights with boars, the whole time one nagging question stuck at the back of my mind, “At what point am I going to get bored with this game?”.
It’s a valid question, and it happens with every game we play sooner or later. The big question is will it be in four hours or forty? As of writing this I’m thirty hours in and have no intention of stopping, in fact, I probably would have had this written and a lot more work is done already had I not got into this game. Suffice to say my fears of getting bored of the game are no longer a concern.
Everyone is talking about this game at present, and for good reason. I’m going to offer some advice that I usually stay away from: the best time to get this game is right now. I like to tell people to wait on certain things if they’re unsure, I mean it’s a digital file for a game it’s not going anywhere and it can only get better over time, right? Well, yeah actually. The developers have released the 2021 roadmap and these updates and events truly are going to be game-changing. With the massive success of the game, there’s no reason these patches shouldn’t be released on time and complete. The reason you should get it now is that I really feel like we’re at the beginning of one of those great games that are going to stick around for a long while. The type of game that someday people will be nervous to get into because it’s been out for so long they would feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of different things to do and experience (which is the reason I still have yet to play Rust, and after this game, I may never attempt to). Getting in on a great game at the beginning is exciting and doesn’t happen often but this one is easy to get in on because it’s inexpensive ($20.00 as of this writing), it works, and it’s fun.
First off, who doesn’t like Vikings? Vikings are cool, they’ve got awesome beards and badass lore that works perfectly for video games. The setting takes place in the 10th realm, a kind of purgatory between Earth and Valhalla and your character has to prove their worth to enter Viking heaven by slaying a number of champions in Valheim. That’s it, that’s the plot. A bird takes you to this strange new world, plops you down, gives you a few tutorial hints, and pretty much slaps you on the ass, and tells you to get to killing. Anything you want to discover in the story you have to do so yourself; reading rune stones, listening to the crow, etc. It doesn’t shove story and exposition down your throat which makes you want to learn it yourself. In a game about Vikings, it’s pretty subtle with the whole Norse thing unlike the recently released Assassins Creed: Valhalla which portrayed Vikings as these ridiculous caricature buffoons who can’t go five seconds without mentioning Odin or Thor and have visions for breakfast.
I’ve always loved the Viking aesthetic which is another hook into why I’m so obsessed with the game. One of the first things you’ll notice when logging into the game for the first time is that the graphics are a little…pixelated. It’s kind of a shock at first but once you get into the game and begin playing you start to appreciate the unique and stylized look of the game. The beautiful lighting and weather effects add fantastical whimsy to the experience and I don’t think I’ll ever forget looking up into the night sky for the first time. I’ll let you experience it for yourself. The stylized method of graphics accomplishes two things: Firstly, it helped the developers create the game faster and with fewer issues, helping them focus on gameplay and creating a working product. Second, they’ll keep the game from looking out of date for a long time. No one complains about Minecraft graphics because the game was made with a specific style in mind and it works for what it’s trying to accomplish.
The most difficult part for me has been avoiding news and screenshots from the game. It’s always a good feeling to discover something for yourself in a game but so many of these crafting games have me getting instantly frustrated and just minimizing the game, opening google and having someone tell me what to do. Valheim makes you want to do it for yourself because when you do it is just so, so satisfying. Aside from the clips they play on their store page, I haven’t seen any of the upcoming locations or enemies and I don’t want to. The panic and excitement that comes from facing a brand new enemy, not knowing what its capabilities are or what it’s going to do to you, it’s how these games are meant to feel.
The game feels totally organic. No scripts, no railroading, nothing. It gives you a goal to work towards but you do with it what you will. You want to work on finding dungeons and fighting trolls and skeletons? Go for it. Want to kick back and build a gigantic mead hall instead? Sounds fun to me. Setting out to an unknown location comes with such a swell of the excitement of not knowing what you’re going to find. The first time we set sail across the ocean might be one of my favorite gaming memories just for how everything happened and how unprepared I was for it. (If you want to follow my method of avoiding “spoiling” the game I’d suggest you skip this paragraph).
The sun was rising over Valheim. I’d finally gotten my three fellow adventurers filled up on food, gear, and to the ship (which is an accomplishment of its own if you know the people I play with. Think “herding cats”). After setting out onto the ocean, congratulating ourselves on finally building a ship and taking to the sea like real Vikings, something troubling was occurring. Off the front of a ship, a giant toothy head emerged from the water, roaring, and hissing at the ship with its lashing tongue. Maybe we expected something to happen but a sea serpent? Just outside the starting area? That we were not ready for. We sailed the ship as fast as it would go, avoiding its bite as best we could while the rest of us feebly flung arrows as it chased us. We managed to avoid sinking, but just barely when we realized we needed to land somewhere to make repairs to the ship. Just ahead, a small island floated in the middle of the water. It wasn’t a base destination by any means but it would do. When we landed on it, we noticed strange barnacles on the island. In Valheim, whenever you find something new you have to harvest it because that’s how it progresses. So we get to swinging and the island starts to shake. Nothing happens at first and we keep swinging but the island shakes again but this time, it roars and begins to submerge. That was when we realized we escaped the attack of the serpent only to land on the back of a gigantic turtle, who does not appreciate us hitting his shell.
The rest of the adventure went on and we even discovered a new area which we got to explore for all of five minutes before we were brutally and systematically murdered by the new monsters. And we wanted to keep on playing.
To reemphasize the point of this post, Valheim is an early access game that feels like it’s complete. In the immortal words of Todd Howard “It just works.”. I’ve played thirty hours and feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of what is out there and what I can experience. I’ve killed one boss and have found the location of the other but it’s so far away I have a lot of work to do before I find myself in its neck of the woods and I absolutely love it. Currently, I’ve stuck a pin in exploring and upgrading my gear and am constructing the massive mead hall I’ve always wanted. The Greydwarfs and Trolls can try to knock my walls down all they want, but my roots are sunk deep, and I’m going to be in Valheim for a very, very long time.
If you’re interested in the future roadmap for the game, just follow this link: https://www.pcgamer.com/valheim-roadmap/