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I remember when Minecraft had come out and how my friends and I were addicted to it for years. The same happened with games such as Terraria and The Forest. However, we have come to realize over the years, games have become increasingly uninteresting and unengaging. And as we lost hope for the games industry to deliver a fun addictive game, Valheim breaks into the scene and wipes the floor with the competition in early access in late February.

Valheim is a viking-themed, survival game that takes elements from many popular titles and transforms them into a beautiful and enjoyable kaleidoscope of experiences. It has survival mechanics similar to many of the staples of the genre, boss battles, and an amazing fighting mechanic that is similar to the Dark Souls style of parrying and strategic combat.

The game can be played as a single player experience or as a co-op experience with up to 5 players. Throughout the journey, the game has a grindy (but fair) progression system where you build to survive and fight bosses to advance and unlock more stuff. Each boss battle pushes you into a new era of discovery and building starting off with the stone age, bronze age and advancing into the iron age. You get to build bases out of various materials and even build viking ships to sail across various islands. That's right, Valheim's world has many various islands and distinctive biomes with new and varying challenges.

Exploration and the sense of discovery is what I think drives this game and the playerbase forward. The game is littered with many resources and enemy mobs that spawn in a procedurally generated world. This aspect of the game greatly increases the replay value as every time you start a new game the map is different and the experience changes much like that of the genre’s giga giant Minecraft.

The game has over 5 million players along with overwhelmingly positive reviews from people with 100+ hours clocked in on the game. Valheim is an indie title developed by just 5 devs. And this washes the floor with industry giants and triple-A studios in terms of polish (for an early access game) and in the experience given to players. It's graphically low demanding and cheap, starting at $19 depending on the region, and is a small game, barely taking up 2 gigs of space. This once again leads to the overwhelmingly large player base that is more inclusive and easy to pick up.

The consumer-friendly model, the mechanics and the friendly community behind Valheim make it a must-have for the first half of the year. We at MvGL give it a score of 9/10, and is perhaps the best game in years that has spread like wildfire across the globe and even in the Maldives. If you pick it up, come join our discord server and let's play together!

About the author: Maldivian Gaming League is a team of e-sports organizers and competition promoters based in the Maldives. For more information, check them out on Facebook or Instagram.