Although Valheim has only been around for almost three months, it has already gathered a lot of attention from players interested in survival games. In this game by Iron Gate Studios, players have to prove themselves worthy of entering Valhalla by surviving in the dangerous land of Valheim.
While this sandbox game is not officially released yet, Valheim has already become one of the most played games on Steam. However, the full release is expected to have considerable improvements including finishing some of the biomes. The game's map is approximately 314 square kilometers already, and it takes a little over four hours to cross it by foot. There is no question Valheim's map is big, but how big is it compared to other survival games?
Rust
Facepunch Studios' Rust is another survival game that was fully released in 2018. This game is a multiplayer-only title, in which players have to watch their back for other users who might be roaming the area.
The game's map is procedurally generated to further ensure uniqueness. On its early release, Rust's map was about 3.95 square feet. This means the island players get to explore in Rust is a little big bigger than the land of Valheim but still pretty similar in size. Another similarity between the two maps is that they are procedurally generated which means players will get to see a different map every time they start a new game.
Minecraft
Ever since its release in 2011, Minecraft has been a huge success. Players of all ages continue to play the game to this day, and it does not seem like they will stop any time soon. One of the reasons that Mojang's game has become so popular is that Minecraft's map is extremely big, randomly generated, and it changes every new game. This is exciting because of the sandbox nature of Minecraft which means players will get to build in different settings every time.
Comparing Minecraft to Valheim is a little bit different because Minecraft worlds are usually measured per block. Minecraft worlds are considered "infinite" because they do not have hard limits but get buggier as the player gets further and further away from the spawning site. The biggest world is 5120 square blocks and each block is a square meter, meaning the biggest Minecraft world is 55111.22 square feet making it considerably bigger than Valheim's map.
No Man's Sky
One of the features that made this game so popular is the attractiveness of No Man's Sky extremely big world. This title by Hello Games was highly anticipated, but it went through a rough start as the game was buggy. Still, No Man's Sky has continued to improve making the game more attractive.
This space-set game generates planets procedurally as well. The game has over 18 quintillion planets meaning is about 20 times bigger than Minecraft's world. Some of its planets alone can be 9000 square miles. Some approximations say that it would take over 500 billion years to explore the full world, and while this is likely, maybe, hopefully an exaggeration, this game's map is considerably bigger than Valheim's.
Valheim is available now for PC.