Reserve your place in Valhalla in Valheim

Valheim is an early access game originally released in 2020 by the developer Iron Gate Studio. The game has no full release date announced so far but gets updated frequently, with its last major update being “Mistlands” in December 2022. Originally, Valheim was intended to be released fully sooner, but the popularity of its release surprised even the developers. This led to the development team being able to hire more developers and being able to focus more closely on different aspects of the game.

In Valheim, you play as a Viking, placed in a mythical world without any equipment. The game gives you occasional hints in the form of a raven, but much is left for you to explore and discover yourself. You create your own custom Viking character, although the customisation options are quite limited. You can also create your own world or join an existing one online. Each world is procedurally generated and has a unique map seed, so the world can be quite different. Still, all of the world consists of different biomes, geographical regions that each have their own landscapes, enemies, items, and bosses. These biomes also determine the difficulty of surviving, each with its own unique aspects.

A mighty Viking is looking across a river.

In the world of Valheim, you must survive by gathering resources by, for example, hunting, woodcutting, and foraging food from the forests. Food helps you momentarily gain more health and stamina, while with the resources you have, you can build your own home and craft tools, equipment, and weapons. The game is relatively straightforward with consuming the food and crafting, and you get the hang of it quite quickly. Still, especially the building in Valheim has some quirks, and you might have to do it a bit more to get proper end results.

A viking looking towards unfinished wooden building.

Building stuff is fun, but it can also be a drag.

The most annoying thing in Valheim is the fact that your stamina and health drain quickly and recover slowly. This can be mitigated by eating certain foods, but it’s still quite slow. When fighting enemies, it sometimes feels like you are just running around waiting to gain some stamina to attack once and repeat the process again. I would trade more stamina and health for harder enemies at any time! Valheim also has a day and night cycle, and while it brings great immersion to the game, the cycle feels sometimes quite quick and could be even longer in playing time.

Some players have seemed to become irritated by Valheim’s somewhat slow update progression, but the game feels surprisingly polished and offers a vast amount of content for an early access game. The game also doesn’t feel like it has that many major bugs, which can’t be even said for some AAA game releases by major publishers. Still, there is always a risk of buying early-access games, and some might never get finished. In Valheim’s case, if this kind of scenario were to happen, I would be extremely disappointed, but I can’t really argue that I would not have gained enough from playing it.

As closing remarks, I must say that I would highly recommend Valheim to anyone who gets excited about Norse mythology and open-world survival action. If you are not so into those things, I would still recommend at least checking Valheim out. Even if it is still an early access game, you get a hell of an amount of gaming content for less than half what you pay for a fully priced AAA game.

Basic information:
Publisher: Coffee Stain Publishing.
Developer: Iron Gate AB and Fishlabs for Xbox.
Platforms:
Linux, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
Release Dates (Early Access):
February 2, 2020, for Linux and Windows.
March 14, 2023, for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
Genre: Survival, Sandbox, Open-world
PEGI:12