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In the mood to try a new survival game? How about one that's free while it's in the alpha stages? Valheim [itch.io] seems pretty interesting.

What's also quite interesting, is that one of the people working on it actually does so on Linux, which is always sweet to find out.

About the game:

Valheim is a game about exploring a huge fantasy world inspired by norse mythology and viking culture. You start your adventure at the relatively peaceful center of Valheim. The further from the center you travel, the more challenging the world becomes. But you will also find more valuable materials that you can use to craft deadlier weapons and sturdier armor. You will also build your own viking strongholds and outposts all over the world. Eventually you will build a mighty longship and sail the great oceans in search of exotic lands … but be wary of sailing too far...

Current features:

  • Huge procedurally generated world with different biomes.
  • Block and dodge based combat system with a variety of different weapons and combat styles.
  • Build bases, portals and outposts using an intuitive building system.
  • Craft weapons, armors and tools using crafting stations.
  • Cut down trees, mine for minerals etc.
  • Defeat powerful enemies and huge bosses.
  • Build and sail ships on the open ocean.
  • Multiplayer (client-server based)

There's also plenty of features planned like upgradable crafting stations, collectable trophies from monsters and bosses, a female player model, more crafting options, more biomes, more enemies and so on.

Screenshots:


The more I play of it and learn the mechanics, the more the game has opened-up. Gathering new resources opens up new crafting options, the building system seems pretty nice with objects snapping together and falling down if they don't have enough support. I haven't seen too many enemies so far, but the ones I have seen are fun, especially those that run away when I get my torch out and set them on fire. Get off my land demon!

It's quite tempting to boot up a server for this one, as it has some interesting ideas and the gameplay from my own testing seems quite nice so far. Quite amusing that I nearly died while cutting down a tree, as it fell onto another tree, that tree then smacked into another and then they all came tumbling down on top of me—woops.

Find it free (for now) on itch.io.

Hat tip to Burek.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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19 comments
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beko Aug 8, 2018
I've a hard time to believe this is still Alpha. My wife and me had so much fun playing this that we forced ourselves to stop at 2am in the morning.

This is the most beautiful rain simulator we ever played. It's just missing sheep and an option to disable this old school pixel texture for the ground ?
MeanOldBoomer Aug 10, 2018
I'm really enjoying this, nice find! :)
razing32 Aug 11, 2018
Quoting: Voc007No go on Mint 19 and nvidia drivers, it boots up, shows the Made by Unity then just black background. Windows version works great. All other games like SOTA and Albion start just fine.

I think this is a common issue with Unity on Linux depending on libraries used.
Can you try to start it from terminal and see what errors it throws out ?
Voc007 Aug 11, 2018
Quoting: razing32
Quoting: Voc007No go on Mint 19 and nvidia drivers, it boots up, shows the Made by Unity then just black background. Windows version works great. All other games like SOTA and Albion start just fine.

I think this is a common issue with Unity on Linux depending on libraries used.
Can you try to start it from terminal and see what errors it throws out ?

Yeah i tried everything, run in terminal, and ran has root, changed settings, fullscreen or windowed, still no luck. The player.log doens't show anything.
Eike Aug 11, 2018
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Quoting: Voc007Yeah i tried everything, run in terminal, and ran has root, changed settings, fullscreen or windowed, still no luck. The player.log doens't show anything.

No messages in terminal?
robvv Aug 12, 2018
Quoting: GustyGhostIt's kind of like ARK except the developers actually know what they are doing.

I laughed out loud at this and my missus gave me a funny look :-)
Voc007 Aug 12, 2018
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: Voc007Yeah i tried everything, run in terminal, and ran has root, changed settings, fullscreen or windowed, still no luck. The player.log doens't show anything.

No messages in terminal?

Yeah nothing, no errors.
beko Aug 12, 2018
Dev is very active on Discord. Mayhap ask there. Works for me. It even started on my work laptop without dedicated gpu. Just the i7. Stuttering, of course, but launched. Fedora tho.

Netcode on the other side... plenty of issues that I hear are resolved in the upcoming Steam release of this game later this year.

My dedicated alpha server is running fine for days now.
corq Aug 22, 2018
Quoting: GuestItchIO the place were i go once a week for bizarre games

I fire up itch.io every so often just to see what I've missed, but it's 95% "WTF?" even when I find a linux-supported game :)

It's not much a of trade-off, but the upside of narrow linux gaming support in the long run, is the lack of porting of all the "spam" games.
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