The Best Survival Game I’ve Ever Played
INDIE-GAME-538 TAKES GAMING WORLD BY STORM! SURVIVAL-GAME-87 IS THE NEW GAME YOUR FRIENDS WON’T STOP TELLING YOU TO PLAY! We’ve seen this happen before, at least a million times. But this time feels different. There are numerous examples of survival games that blow up, some of which are still thriving today, but most of them fall by the wayside. But Valheim feels special. It does something that so many of these games fail to do-It lets you play alone.
It’s not that you can’t play 7 days to Die or ARK solo. You can, but you’ll have to turn the difficulty settings down because otherwise you’re going to have a very bad time. Others such as Rust, Hurtworld, DayZ and the now-dead but much-hyped DayZ killer H1Z1 (which later became just the name of their BR mode as they rebranded the original game to Just Survive and killed it, but that’s a whole different tangent) all but require you to play with other people. They are PVP driven, while Valheim has optional PVP and pier to pier servers. It’s scaled in such a way that, while difficult, playing the game by yourself is enjoyable. It presents a challenge, but not one that is so insurmountable that you need other people to surpass obstacles. It hits a sweet spot that encourages and allows jolly cooperation without alienating those who seek the challenge of facing this Viking purgatory all alone. The feeling of taking down a Dark Souls style boss solo (while also getting attacked by random enemies that just happened to spawn in that zone) is a satisfying rush. The idea of summonable bosses in these games isn’t new- ARK and Conan both do wonderful jobs of this. But in those titles you will need a group of people to bring down the big bad. In Valheim more people certainly would make your life easier, but it’s not necessary. Don’t mistake this as me telling you the game is easy- if you are underprepared for a new biome even low-level groups of enemies will absolutely wreck you! But if your preparations are on point you should be fine even without nine fellow Vikings at your side (though admittedly raiding with friends is plenty of fun).
The sailing in Valheim is not the best sailing we’ve seen in a game (Sea of Thieves, Atlas and Assassin’s creed all do sailing very well), but it is extremely satisfying here. Needing to navigate the wind, the way ship momentum works, the feeling of sailing across an open sea, riding the rolling waves with rain pouring down and thunder tearing the skies apart making you think you’ve angered Thor himself, sailing through the mists only to spot the silhouette of trees through the fog, navigating the rocks below the waves or risk damaging your vessel- it all feels so good. Particularly when bringing a haul of goods back to your base after you raid a new biome. There is something about the way it’s executed here that’s not only fitting and appropriate but also just feels right.
Then there is Valheim’s most controversial trait the one thing that people keep citing as an excuse to avoid this game-its graphics. This is not a next-gen title- it’s not going to wow you like Cyberpunk 2077 (though it does run with 2077 times fewer bugs and crashes) Valheim is beautiful, but not in the same way as many AAA games in this new generation will be- and that’s by design. It has very distinctly low poly budget textures, but it makes up for it with fantastically executed lighting, fog, and water effects. While playing the other day I summed it up as, “PS2-era textures with next gen water.” Everything looks great, as long as you don’t look too closely. From an optimization standpoint the game seems to run beautifully on just about every system people are playing it on. This is one of the benefits of simple textures and approximately 1 gig file size. The game’s 1GB size is even more amazing when you scroll out on the map and see just how huge the game world is. Every map seed is randomly generated, but if you want to play on the same map as someone else, even when in different worlds, people have been sharing map seeds all over with helpful information on them.
Ultimately Valheim is unique among survival games. It’s not the first Viking themed game, it’s not the first with boss fights, it’s not the first with random maps, or that can be played alone, or with sailing. It’s not even necessarily the best at any one of those particular aspects. But unlike many of the other titles out there it seems to do them all well while running better than others and not requiring any sort of high powered machine to run. Weirdly enough this game doesn’t fill the “survival game” void that’s been there for me, it’s filling a void that been there for me since Skyrim. It’s not an RPG, but this is arguably the most fun I’ve had exploring a game world for the sake of exploring in almost a decade. And the best part is, it came out in early access in a functional state with few major issues, though there is the world killer bug still on the loose so make sure if you do jump in to back up your saves. Valheim is available for $20 on steam, and is well worth the asking price. I highly recommend it.
-Tim
-Tim
