The survival game Viking Valheim has been a huge success since it launched earlier this month. It briefly became the fourth most played game on Steam in its first week, and just a few days ago, developers at Iron Gate Studios announced that it had already sold more than two million copies. At first glance, Valheim looks a bit like the Viking Rust, and you might think that’s where the inspiration comes from. But according to Iron Gate Studios co-founder Henrik Törnqvist, it takes more influence from single-player action and adventure games and RPGs like The Legend Of Zelda and Skyrim.
“We wanted to feel more like an adventure game for an old school gamer, more or less like the older Zeldas,” Törnqvist told PC Gamer. “Where do you get new equipment by defeating bosses. And we thought it would, or we hoped it would, fit in well with the survival aspects of a game.”
And it works well. I’ve only been interested a little bit myself until now, but I’m already enjoying your survival systems a lot, mainly because you won’t just die of hunger or thirst. Törnqvist says these slightly more tolerant systems were the brainchild of Iron Gate Studios CEO Richard Svensson.
“[He] came to the conclusion that an open world simulation that simulates things for no other reason than simulating is quite redundant, “said Törnqvist.” It was when he started developing Valheim, that he wanted to have a lot more focus on gameplay, where simulation helps the player’s gaming experience, rather than getting in the way. ”
I like it very much. I recently finished the parts of the main story of Jangada, the shark escape, the construction of rafts, the exploration of the island, they survive and whenever you run out of food and water at the beginning of the game it is a huge pain. If your friends are around, they can pick you up to throw you in bed and get better, or you can be reborn and lose everything in your inventory. You can search for your backpack and retrieve things, of course, but it will catch you in a knot if you don’t have the supplies to search for it again. Some may like this kind of difficulty curve, but to me it seems punitive for no reason. All it teaches is that you need better sources of food and water, but there is no way to change that without the game having enough supplies for you to make those sources.
In a follow-up post, Törnqvist told PC Gamer a little bit about what to expect from his next updates, as the roadmap the developers have revealed so far is quite light in detail.
So the first update, Hearth And Home, will focus on building houses, giving players more things to do in their Viking homes: “You will probably be very focused on the food preparation aspect of the game with more recipes and stuff,” Törnqvist said. “But there are also additional new building parts.”
Update 2, Cult Of The Wolf, is all about exploration and combat, while Update 3, Ships And The Sea “will bring some ship customizations and try to bring the ocean biome to life a little more”. I think that’s why I’m more excited. Any game that allows players to explore cool things at sea is good in my book – especially if you do it on a custom Viking dinghy.
The fourth and final planned update, Mistlands, will add a new biome with new enemies, items, resources, a new bad boss and more. Törnqvist said that when the game is over, “there will be nine biomes with nine bosses, so we are also exploring adding mini-bosses and things like that”.
He doesn’t give any date when to expect all of this, although it’s important to note that the Valheim Steam page says that the game will have early access for about a year “, but depending on the player’s feedback and the amount of content we choose to place the final game, it may take longer “. Törnqvist also recalled that Iron Gate is a team of just five people, so they have a lot of work ahead of them.
“The whole team is working to fix all the bugs that come up when you suddenly have a million people playing your game,” he said. “As soon as we feel ready, we will start working on the updates described in the roadmap.”
Valheim has many things to explore and discover, however. Ed recently fell in love with the bees in the game and did his best to make a beautiful home that would keep them happy: “Maybe we gave the bees so much importance because they were a bit like us,” he writes. “Just doing what you can to survive.”