Viking survival game Valheim has done some bloody numbers since it was released earlier this month. It soon became the fourth most played game on Steam, and just a few days ago developers Iron Gate Studios announced that it had already sold more than two million copies. At first glance, Valheim looks a bit like Viking Rust, and you might think this is where the inspiration comes from. According to co-founder of Iron Gate Studios, Henrik Törnqvist, it requires more influence from single-player action-adventure games and RPGs like The Legend Of Zelda and Skyrim.
“We wanted more of a feel of an old-school, single-player adventure game, like the older Zeldas,” Törnqvist told PC Gamer. “Where you get new equipment to defeat the bosses. And we thought it would, or we hoped it would fit in well with the survival aspects of a game.”
And fit it in well. I’ve only been hanging out with it a bit so far, but I already enjoy its survival systems a lot, mostly because you will not just die of hunger or thirst. Törnqvist says these slightly more forgiving systems were the idea of Richard Svensson, CEO of Iron Gate Studios.
“[He] concluded that an open-world simulation that simulates things for no other reason than to simulate them is pretty much superfluous, “Törnqvist said. This is when he started developing Valheim, who wanted to be much more focused on the game, where the simulation helps the player’s player experience rather than hinder it. ”
I like it a lot. Recently, I survived the chapters of the raft, the shark-escaping raft building, the island exploration, and when you run out of food and water in the early game, it hurts a lot. If your friends are nearby, they can pick you up to drop you off on a bed, or you may react again and lose everything in your inventory. You can, of course, go looking for your backpack and retrieve things, but it catches you in a rough loop if you do not have the necessities to go looking for it again. Some people may enjoy that kind of difficulty curve, but to me it just feels like no punishment. All it teaches you is that you need better food and water resources, but there is no way to change that without the game providing enough supplies to make those resources.
In a follow-up report, Törnqvist tells a little PC Gamer about what they can expect from the upcoming updates, as the roadmap that the developers have revealed so far is quite light on details.
So, the first update, Hearth And Home, will focus on house building, giving players more things to do with their Viking homes: “It will probably be pretty focused on the food preparation aspect of the game with more recipes and things like that,” Törnqvist said. “But there are also new additional buildings.”
Update 2, Cult Of The Wolf, is all about exploration and combat, while Update 3, Ships And The Sea ” will bring a bit of customization and want to work out the ocean biome a bit more ‘. I think this is the one I’m most excited about. Any game that allows players to explore cool things in the sea is a great game in my book – especially if you can do it on a personal viking longboat.
The fourth and final planned update, Mistlands, will add a new biome with new enemies, items, resources, a new big bad boss and more. Törnqvist said there will be nine biomes with nine bosses when the game is over, and we are also going to add mini-bosses and stuff like that.
He does not give any dates when he can expect it all, but it’s worth noting on Valheim’s Steam page that the game will be available about a year early, but depending on player feedback and the amount of content we choose to put in the last game, it can take longer. “Törnqvist also gave a small reminder that Iron Gate is a team of only five people, so they have a lot of work ahead of them.
“The whole team is working to correct all the mistakes that come to light if you suddenly get a million people in your game,” he said. “Once we get ready, we’ll start working on the roadmap updates.”
Valheim, however, has many things to explore and discover as it is. Ed recently fell in love with the bees of the wild and did his best to make a lovely home that would keep them happy: ‘Maybe we were so interested in the welfare of the bees because they were a bit like us ‘, he writes. “Just do their best to survive.”