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Valheim

Authors: Ben <benk@tilde.team>

Dated: 2021-03-11

This past week, after reading a lot of positive press, I caved in and purchased Valheim on Steam for the $19 early access price. I don't like paying full price for games and usually wait for a discount, but I assumed the price would probably go up after the early access period ends. Thinking I would probably get a good few hours out of it, I calculated that it would be worth the cost. I also considered the fact that the game is Linux-native, and I like to support that, and the graphics didn't look so intense as to not be able to run on my computer. A lot of new games are just too much for my laptop, which seems to do well with games up to around 2016 if they are good-looking 3D games. Valheim's graphic style is inspired by a "low polygon" aesthetic like older Playstation games.

Well, it turns out I made the right choice in buyig this game. After I configured it to run well on my hardware (all graphics settings at the lowest, including the lowest supported resolution being something like 1280x720, which is fine), I just literally couldn't stop myself from playing this game. Somehow I put in 40 hours already, which is just insane especially for me.

At first glance the game doesn't seem like much. You have a pretty good expectation from the get-go of what it entails; procedurally generated world, something like Minecraft. You build a house, craft equipment, and fight monsters. You also explore and discover. They call this genre "survival", which for some reason the idea of which doesn't appeal to me. If you were to tell me if I would like to play a game that's just about "survival", I probably wouldn't be interested. However, Minecraft was my favorite game for a good decade, so if you say instead that it is "Minecraft-like" I might give it a look. Of course, not all games are necessarily as good in any genre.

With it's deceptively simple graphics, Valheim looks boring at first. A friend of mine who played it also described it as boring, but I doubt he played it that much actually. The more I played, the more the game sucked me in. What I realized after many hours, is that what the game has going for it is that it does so many things perfectly when it comes down to the small details.

So what makes Valheim great is not the idea of it. It's not just because of the genre by itself, or the broad concept. It comes down to being the sum of its parts, that every little thing about the game like it's very nice moody soundtrack (Minecraft's music was so bad I couldn't play it without the music turned off), it's spot-on and satisfying sound effects and engineering, the graphic design, the combat and movement, the physics, the weather, and on and on.

Supposedly this game was made by a team of five people, which makes their effort seem all the more amazing. The quality is just superb in every aspect, and the mildly retro graphics are only for an aesthetic. Far from being low-grade, the graphics (almost too much for my machine to handle) features all these gorgeous weather effects, lighting, reflections, smoke, such bright and rich colors. The landscapes are so beautiful and natural feeling. For example, the black forest is just really foresty and atmospheric. The ocean is frightening, the meadows relaxing.

This is the kind of game that you can't be in a rush to play. Someone told me they wouldn't like it because they heard it's "grindy" and they were worried they couldn't make rapid progress in one or two hours. I wouldn't describe it as grindy per se, but it's not a game for rapid progress. It's a game where you log in, complete tasks of your choosing, and zone out with it. It's often relaxing, there's always something to do (do you feel like building? exploring? hunting? sailing? combat?). It's all good and satisfying, and it's also not a snooze-fest either, in spite of its relaxing side it can also give you heart attacks when you find yourself (sometimes unexpectdly) in life-threatening situations.

I don't think it's designed to be particularly difficult or punishing. There's a few points in the game where you're likely to die as you are learning the ropes. Everyone dies from having a tree falling on them (that's intentional). You'll probably get killed by a troll, and there's a few other mishaps, but it's not sadistic. I found the first boss suprisingly easy, and I haven't reached the second yet. As you get good at the game and power up, you're unlikely to die at all during a typical session. For example, I was terrified of facing sea serpents out in the ocean. (You're particularly vulnerable in the ocean because dying there means losing your equipment, so it creates a special kind of anxiety.) However, when I finally faced one the other day, I found it suprisingly easy to deal with and barely threatening at all. It even turned out to be a good food source.

The process of mining copper is a little bit of a drag, which is maybe why people think the game makes you grind, but I just think you have to not rush it. You just have to mine regularly like you do everything else in the game, like regular hunting and gathering. You do need a lot of ore to craft all the equipment and upgrade it, so that's another thing you can't do all at once, and you shouldn't think that you need everything. Rather, just priortize the thing you want most. Bronze equipment seems weak until upgraded at least once.

I honestly don't feel like this game has any serious flaws. It just nails perfectly what it set out to accomplish. Somehow it manages to hit all these feels, like providing some elements of what I loved about other games like the Elder Scrolls series, Minecraft, and even an old favorite game from my childhood called Quest for Glory. The combat system is often compared to Dark Souls, though I'm not sure really. I had the original Dark Souls for the PS3, and I just remember dying a lot. Valheim is a bit more easy than that; you whack the monsters, it's satisfying, you collect the loot.

Will I get bored of it eventually? Maybe. I don't know. There's still several biomes and bosses that I haven't even gotten to yet, so even after forty or so hours I am so far from having discovered all the game's content or reached the end. I'm starting to wish that the Black Forest had a little bit more content since I ended up spending so much time in it and it got repetitive, but that just means I have to defeat its boss finally and move on to the swamps or whatever's next. Being early access, the game is technically not finished, and the developers are saying they will expand content this year, but even as it is I would say it's a complete game. Anything more than what's already there is just icing on the cake, and as others have mentioned it really doesn't have much in the way of bugs. Of course, it does have good potential for expansion.

As far as Linux (non-free) gaming goes, this is a fantastic achievement. The game sold over five million copies in four weeks, which is no accident. If I had to choose just one game to play for the next year or so, I would let it be this one.