Valheim is a great game. I would go as far as claiming its a masterpiece.

I love Valheim. It has become my go-to winter game. It’s a masterpiece. When it was released in February 2021, as the pandemic was in full swing, it became a surprise hit. And it’s easy to see why. The game is a perfect mixture of a simple, Minecraft-like aesthetic, survival mechanics that are pretty tough without being too frustrating and almost Dark Souls level boss fights. A very rounded-out take on the third-person survival-RPG formula. And it is absolutely beautiful to boot. With an amazing soundtrack that ranges from whimsical to totally smashing.

Valheim is still in early access – i.e. it hasn’t been officially released – but they just published their second big expansion (after the Hearth & Home update last autumn). This update is called Mistlands and adds a new biome as well as a lot of new content. This new update got me playing again and I feel like I really should have jumped back into the game again much earlier.

Valheim might not be fully released yet, but you should check it out nonetheless. It reminds me of Minecraft in that it is truly one of these games where it being in “beta” or “early access” means nothing. Valheim, as it stands today, is a lot more polished than many AAA titles are at launch. It is a beautiful game with a lot of content. Including the ocean, it has seven fully-realised biomes now. There are six major bosses. There’s base building and lots of things to craft, many different weapons, animals to hunt and a huge procedurally generated world to explore. I particularly enjoy exploring new worlds in this game! Just like with Minecraft, it’s fascinating to see what the algorithms come up with. Because of all of this, it is also very replayable. And you get all of it for €20!

A really innovative feature is that your characters – and their skills, which are your ultimate assets in Valheim – are portable between worlds. So you can level up a character and then start a new, procedurally generated world, if you want. Worlds, much like Minecraft, can also be easily turned into servers and you can host them for play sessions with your friends.

But the best thing about Valheim is its atmosphere. The graphics, the world, the sound design and the music …it all works together to create this feeling of a place. That is something that only very few video games have. And Valheim nails it. You actually do feel like a Viking trying to hold on to your soul in this weird afterlife where you can’t permanently die and at night the huge branches of Yggdrasil can be seen in the sky. And somehow, the hostile environment coupled with the cosy hearth and home you’re building for yourself – including a cooking fire, beehives, a garden and a mead fermenter – makes for a very good game to play on cold winter evenings, where you’re warming yourself by the hot exhaust of a 3000 series GPU.

I currently work a lot, so I don’t have that much time to play games. But I’ve started a new character, generated myself a new world and have fallen back into this comfortable habit of playing Valheim when I need to wake up in the morning or want to wind down at night. It’s challenging enough to keep me interested, but at the same time you kind of make your own difficulty by deciding when to explore what, so it can also be an incredibly chill game. I am very glad I found my way back to it.