Fvnctional // March 31st, 2021
I’m a little bit late to the Thunder party, but having read the excellent work of my teammates here, I decided it was time to stop sitting on ideas and start writing them. Now, if you have kept your eyes or ears open over the past few months, it will have been hard to miss the V-game. Not Valorant, but Valheim. Iron Gate Studio’s new Viking exploration game. Or is it a settlement crafting game? Or a survival game? Or a boss fighter? The short answer is “yes.” The long answer is “yeeessss.”
I personally did not feel interested in Valheim when I first heard of it. That is because a lot of the charm of this game is impossible to convey through details alone. (At this point I wonder why I have chosen to write about this game if that truly is the case.) However, after hearing nothing but good things about it, I decided to take the plunge – cliché allowing. The price point is reasonable, but not insignificant. Thankfully, this particular game is a safe purchase as prospective buyers can get a very strong understanding of Valheim from the get-go and, making use of Steam’s refund policy, can play 2 hours, get an accurate feel for the game, and make the informed decision then. However, those 2 hours will be tricky, as time works a bit strangely when playing Valheim.
At this point we are all familiar with the notion of personal time travel when playing games; the famous ‘one more turn’ line of Sid Meier’s fame that somehow teleports players from 9pm to 4am has stretched its tendrils into almost every game genre, and Valheim is no different. In fact, Valheim is worse than most for this ability to suck players in. The core mechanic of Valheim is its growth, its progression system. You do [x] to get [y], which then allows you to do [z]. Rinse and repeat – it’s nothing new in gaming. However, Valheim’s tree of progression grows quickly, and the scope of what players are able to do can widen so swiftly that the satisfaction of the grind is never quite lost. “I just need to kill [x] enemy, which will unlock [y], allowing me to go and do [z], so that I can craft [I have run out of letters].” This is a blessing and a curse, as it keeps the player invested in the game, but it also encourages a play-to-win mentality where they are always chasing the next unlock, which is generally tied to defeating a boss.
I am sure that for some players, the progression-chaining idea of smashing out boss-fights is fun, but it undeniably causes the game to be over quicker. If we have learnt anything from the successes of openworlders like Nintendo’s Breath of the Wild, it’s that beating the main objective of a game does in no way mean that the player has completed the game, or even experienced what the game has to offer. Take Daniko’s nearest and dearest child, Skyrim for example. There is no way to play a game wrong per se, but if a player picks up an open-world RPG like Skyrim, plays through the main quest, finishes it, and then puts the game down having ‘completed’ it, they have somewhat missed the point of the game. As it so happens, this analogy fits Valheim well, where the best moments that the game has to offer are to be found not at the end, but along the way.
The world of Valheim is conceptually quite simple. There are different biomes to explore, each bringing with them different unique resources to farm, and different enemies to fight. Upon touching a new resource, the game informs the player of the new crafting recipes unlocked by obtaining said resource. The new crafting recipes facilitate greater survivability, and the ability to fight the next boss. This fuels the need for expansion in the game, and is relatively simple to get your head around. However, the spanner in the works is Valheim’s random seeds for the world that you play, in tandem with the sheer size of the game map. There is no guarantee that players will find the swamp biome necessary for their progression within even a vaguely close proximity to their starting location. The maps are seemingly random, which means that exploring is not just a core feature of the game, but it is the game. This is a hugely positive aspect of Valheim, as no two maps are the same, and, before players can progress through the game, they have to find their way first. This is where the meat of Valheim is found.
It is difficult to find a sweet spot in relation to Valheim’s progression. If players rush for objectives, they will finish the game and miss out on magical moments. On the other hand, savouring every moment of the playthrough can lead to stagnation, so it is arguably not ideal to actively put off fighting the next boss, or exploring the next biome. This piece is not meant to serve as a review of Valheim, (that comes later!) but instead talking about how best to enjoy it, and the difficulty of progression in sandbox playstyles. However, what I can say is that my favourite moment in Valheim by far was sitting in a shelter that I had built, cooking food over a fire, whilst the foulest, most awful thunderstorm raged on outside. At that point, I should have been fighting the next boss – I had the appropriate gear, and I knew their location. Despite that, though, I was enjoying myself, cooking meat in a cozy little house, out from the rain. My enjoyment of Valheim, just like the food I was poorly cooking, is a slow burn. – Fvnctional
Thunder's Remnant 