On Feb 2nd I purchased Valheim on Steam’s early access. Since then, it has been the only game I’ve played. The viking survival/exploration/building game has taken the world by storm and is definitely one of my favorite survival games to date. In one month I’ve put 250 hours into it, 50% as much time as my total play time in No Mans Sky over the last few years. The prefab crafting is pretty solid, the world is fantastically generated, and the game play just challenging enough to not be boring but simple enough to not require study/grinding to survive.

The building, unlike minecraft, is physics based. Parts have stability, can only go so high, or so far from their support structures. Go farther, they will collapse. This makes construction less free-form but much more interesting from an engineering perspective. It also has the added benefit of making it so supports are not simply decoration you add to your build to make it look natural but are required from the start. I personally love that.

Here are some examples of things I’ve built in Valheim to date:

In addition to being extremely fun to build in the world environment in Valheim is really quite lovely. I’ve spent literal hours just sailing across the ocean enjoying the views, sunsets, and waves.

If you haven’t already got a copy of this fantastic game you can pick it up on Steam in early access, I highly recommend it.