The co-op Viking survival game Valheim has seemingly come out of nowhere, absolutely taking Twitch by storm. While the survival genre has had games do this in the past, those days are fewer and farther between, where that honor generally goes to the battle royale genre.
What is it exactly about Valheim that's creating such a craze? There's no doubting that, despite the game being in early access, it's a very good game with a lot of content, and more polish than the early access tag is used to. But there are plenty of good games that go unnoticed. Valheim has seemingly created a melting pot of ideas and mechanics that have perfectly suited it towards becoming the next big survival game on Twitch.
Procedurally Generated Open-World
While this is in no way unique to Valheim (and is arguably overused by games in general), procedural generation has been used extremely effectively here. Valheim has a vast open-world, with many different biomes that mostly feel pretty different from each other. Even though the world is huge, if it was just one world that every single player saw, it likely wouldn't have the same appeal that it does right now, at least not after a couple of days. People would feel like they'd seen the world that the game has to offer, and considering the game revolves so much around exploring and traveling around the realm, that would signal an early grave, at least on Twitch.
It helps that this procedural generation is really good, too. There aren't too many areas where it feels like the game spat out too many 1s instead of 0s and created a really awkward area that doesn't make any sense; for the most part, it creates a believable yet still stylistic and fantastic world that feels fun and rewarding to explore.
Co-Op
Co-op in any game is going to help it explode on Twitch, for a couple of reasons. Viewers enjoy watching different streamers that they like playing something with each other. It creates a fun dynamic watching them bounce off each other, and it helps ensure there's less dead air throughout the stream as at least one person is usually doing something interesting. It also helps the streamer stay engaged. While most streamers do enjoy interacting with chat, a lot of them like to spend some time playing games with their friends, as well. A co-op game gives them the best of both worlds.
The Viking Setting
The Viking setting has solidified itself as a very popular one throughout the last few years of gaming, with games like God of War and Assassin's Creed Valhalla just naming a couple. It's a setting that has some aspects that feel very familiar, with the medieval flavor and possible fantasy flair, but it's also one that hasn't been entirely explored, at least until recently. It's a setting that a developer can go a lot of different directions in, giving multiple games that use the Viking setting the possibility of still taking it in a very different direction. Valheim makes great use of this setting, steeping itself in Viking lore.
A Good Early Access Game
The most important thing, though, is that at its core, Valheim is a very good game. Most of the time when a survival game launches in early access on Steam, players, streamers, and viewers all know what they're in for. It's generally a very buggy experience with a couple of interesting mechanics that may or may not evolve in the next five years or so, but Valheim is different.
Valheim is already receiving good updates, and it already feels like it has a full game's worth of content, especially for the price tag. On top of that, that content is fairly polished. It creates a world where the player has a lot of freedom, and because of this, few Valheim streams are going to feel the same. Every streamer, and every player, is going to come to the game in a different way, creating a different experience for everybody.
Valheim is available now in Early Access on Steam.