Valheim is now available on Xbox consoles.
That includes Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. Of course, Valheim remains available on Windows via Steam since 2020, but is also available as a PC download on Game Pass.
Valheim is a multiplayer survival game with procedural generation and open sandbox elements. Even before its Early Access status, developers Iron Gate AB earned a reputation for producing the smoothest updates, with few issues and bugs, much less crashes.
In Norse mythology, Valheim is the tenth world found within the world tree Yggdrasil. Actually, Valheim isn’t found in the Norse mythology of hundreds of years ago, as Yggdrasil really only had nine worlds.
Valheim is a fiction invented just for this video game, a tenth world where slain Viking warriors go to prove themselves.
In that capacity, you and as many as nine other warriors explore a biome, fighting creatures and gathering resources to earn skills and eventually summon a boss to fight. In keeping with its sandbox nature, you can use the resources you gather to build all manner of things, including weapons, longboats, and longhouses.
While players will vouch for the game’s quality, there are a few intangibles that make it unique, and possibly contribute to why it’s cited by its fans as a GOTY contender.
One is the very strange paradox behind it being a survival game. In most cases, you cannot die in Valheim. While it fits the premise of the game somewhat, it’s still quite strange that you can’t starve to death.
But if you lose all your stamina from starving, rather than dying, you hit a weakened state. Aside from removing a potential reason to stop playing, this game design incentivizes you to collect food, and cook and eat as many high quality recipes as possible.
The game has recently added its seventh biome to coincide with this launch, with two more planned in the future.
This mini-guide to Valheim also reveals an interesting detail. Iron Gate AB has procured the services of two separate porting teams to work on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S versions. Iron Gate intends to get all future updates to all platforms out at the same time. Unfortunately, there is no Game Pass Ultimate cloud based version available at this time.
That dedication to customer service is part of why Valheim is one of the most popular games on Steam, and considered a sleeper hit that could be renowned as one of the best games to come out this year.
You can watch the official Xbox launch trailer for Valheim below.
