Steam Game Festival 2021: Valheim hands-on preview

Valheim is a multiplayer survival game developed by Iron Gate Studio and published by Coffee Stain Publishing. Valheim plunges players into a hostile world rich with Norse mythology, hideous beasts to fight, wild game to hunt, and of course, plenty to craft and build.

The first thing players will notice in Valheim is its graphics. They’re simple, yet charming. Everything looks like a low poly-count PlayStation 1 game albeit with modern day lighting and draw distances. It’s a highly stylised art direction that works surprisingly well, with the developers pushing the environments quite far given the art style. Forests feel rich and dense and the storms that buffet the shorelines feel harrowing and dramatic.

As for the gameplay in Valheim, players are dropped into a randomly-generated world and are led through a rather straightforward tutorial by a raven. Some of the first goals include much of what you might expect from a survival-crafting game: make an axe, cut down a tree, make a home, and feed yourself. But soon enough the raven is directing you to go off and hunt one of the major beasts of the area.

All of this can be done solo, but the game is setup to be best experienced with a group. Players can work together to slay creatures, tackle the challenging boss fights, and help one another with crafting and food acquisition. At one point in my co-op play session, my partner and I were hunting deer, trying to avoid letting the wind blow our scent towards the skittish animal. We sneaked up on it in a pincer formation and sprung our attack, me throwing my spear and her slinging arrows. The deer fell and we walked away with a bit more meat, some leather, and a few more crafting recipes to try out.

In terms of crafting, there’s the usual fair of walls and roofs, floors and stars, chests and workbenches, as well as a variety of weapons, tools, and armor, all in a viking style. But unlike other survival games where the terrain you get is what you’re stuck with, Valheim has some terrain editing tools available for the player. While my partner erected walls and a thatched roof to keep the fire from going out in the rain, I used a hoe to flatten out the land and create a more inviting place to rest between hunting and fighting.

All of this took place in a tiny shoreline on one island in a vast and sprawling map. Players can, after some upgrades, craft rafts and eventually ships, which will allow them to travel on the oceans and visit new lands. The raven promised that greater challenges await and directed us into an area that we were warned against visiting when we first woke up in this offshoot of the mighty Yggdrasil. There’s a constant sense of progression as you unlock new recipes, craft new items, and stretch out into the world.

There are a lot of unique and enticing elements of Valheim, enough to make it a must-play title for those vying for something fresh in the survival genre space. With the developers offering a roadmap of what they plan to create, there looks to be even more around the corner to keep players coming back to this charming and challenging world.

This preview is based on a Steam key provided by the publisher. Valheim is now available through Steam Early Access.

Sam Chandler

Guides Editor

Hailing from the land down under, Sam Chandler brings a bit of the southern hemisphere flair to his work. After bouncing round a few universities, securing a bachelor degree, and entering the video game industry, he's found his new family here at Shacknews as a Guides Editor. There's nothing he loves more than crafting a guide that will help someone. If you need help with a guide, or notice something not quite right, you can message him on X: @SamuelChandler