Despite 2024's Survival Game Renaissance, Valheim Remains Special

Highlights

Valheim’s unique art style and immersive Viking fantasy sets it apart from other survival games in the market.
The game’s visually enchanting world, with its blend of lighting and shadows, creates a mystical experience for players to explore.
Valheim’s emphasis on cooperative play, deep building mechanics, and challenging boss battles make it a standout Viking game.

Despite a veritable cornucopia of recent survival game releases, with the likes of Palworld taking the gaming world by storm, Valheim still sits atop a skull-adorned throne. It has been three years since Iron Gate AB unleashed Valheim onto storefronts like a mad berserker, bringing with it a chance for players to conquer the Viking-inspired lands with their friends. Games like Palworld and Enshrouded thrive within their respective niches, but while they may be new, Valheim still feels special in comparison. Between its unique art style and excellent Viking fantasy, Valheim remains a special survival experience.

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Valheim’s World is Truly Unique

Valheim’s Bewitching Horizons

Oftentimes, it is enough to look at a screenshot of a game to get a good sense of what the art style is and how it all looks in-game. In Valheim’s case, screenshots and videos cannot do the game justice. At first glance, the game looks strange with its muddy textures and slightly “cartoonish” character models, like a game from the early 2000s got lost and turned up just in time for Ragnarok. However, seeing a sunrise in the Meadows – Valheim’s first biome – for the first time is truly special. With a distinctive blend of lighting and shadow, Valheim is a prime example of what a strong visual style can do for a game without relying on high graphical fidelity.

The game’s atmosphere is simply enchanting. Watching the sun break through the forest canopy as mist still lingers in the air, with titanic branches of Yggdrasil looming over the land and stretching endlessly through the sky, while the forest in the distance gets slightly thicker and darker with each step taken toward it, makes for a mystical experience unique to the 10th Norse world where Valheim takes place.

Valheim’s Ominous Nordic Sights

The beautiful landscape and picturesque hills aren’t the only parts of Valheim’s world that can capture a player’s attention. As much as its beauty is striking, it’s the shadows that hold the most intrigue. Whether it’s delving into a pitch-black barrow or trudging through a dark forest, Valheim manages to weave a wonderful sense of danger and dread while exploring. When night comes, the game becomes dark, twisting what the player sees into something else. The rough textures making up the monsters of Valheim truly come into their own when veiled in darkness, making the enemies seem far more grotesque than during the day.

Light sources are key when exploring during the night – getting lost is very easy – and even more important when going underground. Many games have some visibility even in caves and tunnels, which makes the dark little more than an annoyance. Going underground in Valheim means stepping into pitch darkness, and the monsters who dwell there don’t need light to see. Iron Gate AB’s carefully crafted world beckons the player to explore it further, to see what else it hides beyond the treeline, and just like the myths and fairy tales it was inspired by, it reveals just how deep the darkness is, as well as what lurks in it.

Valheim Provides a Viking Fantasy Like No Other

Valheim is Viking Survival Through and Through

Valheim, as most Viking fantasies are, is all about earning a place in Valhalla through bloody combat alongside fellow warriors. Survival is, of course, a large part of it, but unlike most survival games, a hardened warrior isn’t going to drop dead because they didn’t eat their daily dose of protein. Food and drink are important, in that they fortify the character’s health and stamina, enabling them to stay in the fight longer.

Naturally, the monsters won’t just creep around the wilderness, waiting for a band of angry Vikings to come clamoring for a fight, but will periodically launch raids upon the player’s base, becoming progressively more dangerous as players progress through the main quest. In Valheim, a sturdy, fortified base becomes a necessity, and the game’s deep building mechanics truly shine in cooperative play, enabling players to create impressive works of architectural wonder.

Once the base has been built, the food has been cooked and arms have been forged, all that remains for players to progress through the game, and closer to their ultimate goal of reaching Valhalla, is finding the game’s bosses and slaying them in Odin’s name. Each of them is a unique creature with a memorable design that will test the players’ skill and teamwork, from the boss of the game, Eikthyr onward.

A Story Still in the Making

Valheim is still in Early Access, while its full release date is set somewhere in 2025. There are 6 biomes (out of 8) already implemented, and the game offers hours upon hours of content, be it building, exploring or battling mythic monsters. Even among the myriad of different flavors of survival games in 2024, as a gritty, dark, Viking fantasy, Valheim is still to this day in a league of its own.