GB Feature: Valheim Early Access Preview

While not necessarily checking all of the same boxes that a standard role-playing game would, Iron Gate’s Valheim brings a unique blend of survival, crafting, character development, and sandbox gameplay that piqued our interest during its Early Access launch and ultimately led to this three-page preview. A little something of what to expect:

Valheim also has a skill system inspired by The Elder Scrolls series. As you chop down trees, swing your sword, or just run across the plains as the local fauna tries to kill you, your skills gradually improve, making you a better lumberjack, swordfighter, or sprinter. You get the idea.

And should your character fall, you will drop all your items (you’ll be able to recover them), but more importantly, you will lose a certain number of skill points, which can sting quite a bit in the later stages of the game, incentivizing you to better prepare for your expeditions.
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Next up is another staple of survival games – free-form base building. Now, for a lot of people, a rich story is an integral part of the RPG experience. For me, it’s planning a character build and then seeing it gradually come together.

While playing Valheim, I was surprised to discover that building a base over a rather extended period of time was a similar kind of fun. Having started with nothing, I first took shelter in a pre-built dilapidated shack, and then expanded from there. By the time I was done with the game, I had an entire Viking hamlet at my disposal with a house fit for a jarl, a spacious mead hall, a warehouse doubling as an embarkation room for my portals, an industrial quarter, a garden, and not one, but two docks, not to mention a bunch of small outposts all over the world.