Valheim (2021)

After over hundred hours or so, we finally beat the Mistlands' boss on my friends' mutual server. I'll reserve reviewing the game properly after the whole thing is out with Deep North and all (if even that is all) but I'll say a few words on the experience so far.

Valheim is an awesome multiplayer experience. It's an awesome, clunky, punishing, slow, laborous, annoying, buggy experience. Few games have hooked me like this and filled me with a sense of adventure and survival. Super memorable stuff. Playing with friends, venturing together and dividing tasks especially make the brutal experience more tolerable and memorable. Despite (and partly because of) all the work-heavy and annoying stuff, achieving things in Valheim is very rewarding. It's a slow burn that's worth it. For the most part. Fuck Mistlands.

And even after 100 hours, I feel like I have tons of stuff I need to do or try.

So my first full day of in months and because my leg is fucked up I couldn't actually do anything else than play. My husband and I bought Valheim many months ago but haven't had time to co-op play with a new game. (It takes longer to start new game than just jump to the old one). So finally, I woke up and took my coffee and said "Let's play Valheim." This was 15 hours ago... 15 hours in one sitting. I'm way too old for this. My eyes hurt. I can't turn my head because my neck is stuck and and I don't even want to think about my back (I hunch over when I play).

This was a blast. Can't wait to try more..I red that you can build a hot tub..I must have a hot tub in my awesome viking fortress. That my husband said looks like a chicken coop)..

Crafty survival-focused games are not so much a genre these days as they are a scourge, covering the land waist-deep in shitty clones and smelting equipment. Minecraft and Terraria were magical at the time, but the formula has been repeated and refined so very many times that it's hard to give a dang about new contenders for the wilderness survival throne. Even so, Valheim did its homework and made sure to hit all the necessary notes very well.

You play as a dead viking, reincarnated in VALHEIM, the tenth world. The gods are concerned that damned and rejected spirits in this underworld are gathering power and might soon threaten the rest of the universe, and so you and your pals have been sent here to find and slay the ring leaders of this invasion. But, y'know, take your time about it. The world is MASSIVE, so it'll take a while. Build a nice house or two or forty, making friendly way stations you can rest at while exploring new terrain. Get your gear together; that wooden club you made three minutes into your experience might not get the job done, so you'll need to gradually build up a proper arsenal. And, hey, maybe get in some training? Level up a wide variety of skills, granting permanent improvements over time as you play (so long as you don't die, resulting in a minor skill drain penalty).

All in all, Valheim is a chill experience 90% of the time. The procedurally generated world might not be photorealistic, but you'll come across some beautiful scenery all the same. Smashing your way through a tangled wood, only to stumble out into a gorgeous green clearing just drenched in sunlight, is a magical experience, and I found myself abandoning my original exploration goals more often than I expected just to stop and plan out building a quaint country cottage. Staying strong requires eating a balanced (well, preferably an all-meat) diet, and maintaining cooking fires to keep up production of nommables manages to feel like progress rather than a chore. And when you're tired of things being too chill, a pack of wolves or a mountain troll will appear out of nowhere and reduce you to pudding just to spice up your day, or you can delve into one of the pitch-black, claustrophobic dungeons in search of rare materials and unusual treasure.

At the end of the day, Valheim is story-light but deeply satisfying to work your way through. It even supports multiplayer for you weirdos who like that sort of thing! I'm dozens of hours in and still far, far from done, but I imagine I'll be making my way through it for the next week or so quite happily.