The indie multiplayer exploration, survival, and crafting game from Swedish developer Iron Gate Studio, Valheim, has maintained a steady number of concurrent players ever since its initial release in February 2021. Following an announcement at the 2022 Xbox and Bethesda extended showcase that the game will be coming to Xbox via Xbox Game Pass, it's likely that those numbers will steadily increase as new consoles are ushered in.

Valheim allows players to craft objects, explore vast lands, and battle foes, similar to the premise of Mojang's Minecraft - though it still retains its own highly distinctive qualities. After all, the low poly and simple textured game is inspired by Norse mythology and maintains a world that's roughly twenty times larger than the Minecraft map. Still, it could learn something from Minecraft by adding a Creative Mode of its own.

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Creative Mode is Long Overdue for Valheim

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The popular Viking survival simulator has been praised for its forgiving nature, at least in terms of allowing players to properly gear up for specific biomes and keep their character's inventory across multiple servers. Most survival open-world games, like Rust or Ark: Survival Evolved, are not known for being this lenient. However, despite this, many Valheim fans are hoping that an official Creative Mode will soon be introduced, as it could take away from some stress of building since players would no longer have to worry about a troll chasing them through the Black Forests as they try to collect logs.

At the moment, no real Creative Mode exists for the game, though there are ways to use console commands in Valheim to achieve something of the same effect. Players are able to fly by toggling "Z," while hitting "B" allows them to infinitely repair items and place objects without a Workbench at hand. Enemies still exist here, but "K" will instantly kill any in the surrounding area.

Survival mode doesn't seem to be the place to be focusing on building anything that isn't simple, unfortunately, as many players reported they felt farming materials was too time-consuming and risky. After using console commands and rotation mods to assist in building, many found it difficult to return to the original survival mode without them. With a real Creative Mode, the Valheim community could truly flourish, as various people have already proven their ingenuity and skill with plenty of incredible Valheim builds.

Notably, Valheim was engineered by a five-person team and at one point was just a side project for now-CEO Richard Svensson to tinker around with in his free time. After its early release access went live, the game briefly skyrocketed to the top of Steam's sales charts and became critically acclaimed. It makes sense, then, that this indie game did not start with or introduce early on a proper Creative Mode for fans to putter around in. However, it should now be prioritized.

Perhaps the developers are wary of fully bringing this mode into the sandbox game since players are able to drag a character and their respective Valheim inventory to another world so easily. This seems like a quick fix, however, in that Iron Gate could simply not allow this action to be done. Creative Mode only characters could be created, or objects used in this mode could be non-transferable to survival-based worlds.

While the debug mode can be a fun and unique experience in of itself, a real Creative Mode is long overdue for Valheim. Plenty of games like Super Mario Maker 2, LEGO Worlds, and Planet Coaster have adopted Creative Modes to ensure there are fewer restrictions barring their fans from creative freedom. Minecraft is known for its Creative Mode, designed for those who simply want to relax, farm, and build without limitation. It's high time that the Vikings of this procedurally-generated world were given the same opportunities without having to meddle with console commands or mods.

Adding a Creative Mode could only help this already successful game, as it will bring fresh features for long-time players and diversity for those that just want to build Helms Deep from Lord of the Rings in peace. With any luck, Iron Gate Studios will announce that it is in development sometime in the near future, perhaps as the date for the launch on Xbox grows closer.

Valheim is available for PC and will be available for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S in Spring 2023.

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