Valheim – PC Gamer’s Game of 2021

While not a proper RPG, when it initially launched into early access, Iron Gate’s Viking survival game Valheim was a curious enough project to warrant a full preview from us. And apparently, the game also resonated with the editors over at PC Gamer, since they consider it to be their game of the year despite the fact that it’s still in early access.

Here’s a bit as to why:

Sarah James, Guides writer: I didn’t expect to devote hundreds of hours to Valheim when I first picked it up. I went into it with fairly low expectations, but I can honestly say that I haven’t been that excited to get back to playing a game since World of Warcraft first got its hooks into me years ago. I swear the game has some kind of time-warping capabilities—I’d load up my Valheim world at say, 8 p.m., intending to play for a couple of hours, then look up to discover that it was well into the early hours of the morning.

I seemed to spend most of my time planning to do one specific thing, then I’d get distracted by something else—for literal hours—before remembering the original thing I was planning to do. That you don’t have to worry about starving—or any other brutal survival mechanic—really makes the game for me. You can take it at your own pace and play however you want. This clearly worked for me, as I ended up racking up just over 300 hours before even attempting the third boss. I just had far too much fun building bases, exploring, and taming wolves.