This whole round of suvival game focus started for me because the makers of No Man’s Sky, Hello Games, announced their coming title, Light No Fire.  The promise of that got me worked up on the genre once more.

Light no Fire… not in 2024 at least

That led to me looking into some possible Valheim alternatives… Valheim being my current gold standard for open world, co-op suvival titles… during the Steam Winter Sale.  I actually bought some things and played them!

But none of them quite scratched the right itch and while I got more suggestions, eventually I just wanted to play something, so we kicked off a new Valheim world.  Done and done, right?

Of course, the day I put down the credit card to rent a server for 30 days and roll up a fresh world one of the possible alternative candidates, Conan Exiles, goes on sale for half off.  I wasn’t willing to experiment for $40, but for $20 I might have.

But I was committed and wanted to play something, though I wasn’t so invested in Valheim that I couldn’t have been derailed… but nothing quite caused me to be so moved.

First up was Palworld, or Pokemon with Guns, which by reasonable measures… dollah dollah bills… has been a huge success and has sold millions of copies.   This seemed to be right up my alley, to the point that G-Portal even had server rentals for it right away.  This featured on a number of blogs I followed.

I thought about jumping into this… but wasn’t quite convinced.  Close, but not quite there.

Then there was Enshrounded, which is also on my Steam wishlist and which also tickled the shared world co-op aspect of my desires, and which was also featured on G-Portal server rentals, and which had also grabbed the interest of some other bloggers.  It sounded good and I thought about grabbing it, yet another early access title.  But I haven’t so far.

And then this week Nightengale landed on Steam, once again in the suvival co-op crafting genre, and once again grabbing a few people I know, including a couple of the bloggers in the neighborhood. (Belghast was on about it yesterday, as was Bhagpuss.)  It is in early access and might need some work, but it did catch my eye.  Private servers are not a thing it seems, instead you can share your part of their world with just your friends if I read things correctly… which also means when thier servers are down you’re not playing.

I am sure there was also something else out there that popped up… Last Epoch maybe, or was it some other title… I don’t remember all of them.  But it did feel like the universe had decided to mock me a bit for my desire for a Valheim-like co-op experience by throwing all of these new and tempting options at me after I committed to the Valheim.

Then again, I am happy playing Valhelm right now.  It has an ease about it that can soak up hours of time,  We have been moving through the opening biomes at a quick pace, but that has been helped along by mods and familiarity, which isn’t a bad thing.  I suspect that we will slow down a bit at the plains, and that the mistlands will take us long enough to conquor that the ashlands will have finally arrived by the time we finish off that boss, which will give us another biome to master.

So I feel the temptation of these other titles, the fear of missing out if I am not there at the beginning the way I was for Valheim.

On the other hand, if those titles are any good, they’ll be there waiting for us.  And I also know that the last three years has seen Valheim improve a great deal.  As the song says, fools rush in… and sometimes they get the best seats, and other times they pay the price for being too early on the scene.

This whole round of suvival game focus started for me because the makers of No Man’s Sky, Hello Games, announced their coming title, Light No Fire.  The promise of that got me worked up on the genre once more.

Light no Fire… not in 2024 at least

That led to me looking into some possible Valheim alternatives… Valheim being my current gold standard for open world, co-op suvival titles… during the Steam Winter Sale.  I actually bought some things and played them!

But none of them quite scratched the right itch and while I got more suggestions, eventually I just wanted to play something, so we kicked off a new Valheim world.  Done and done, right?

Of course, the day I put down the credit card to rent a server for 30 days and roll up a fresh world one of the possible alternative candidates, Conan Exiles, goes on sale for half off.  I wasn’t willing to experiment for $40, but for $20 I might have.

But I was committed and wanted to play something, though I wasn’t so invested in Valheim that I couldn’t have been derailed… but nothing quite caused me to be so moved.

First up was Palworld, or Pokemon with Guns, which by reasonable measures… dollah dollah bills… has been a huge success and has sold millions of copies.   This seemed to be right up my alley, to the point that G-Portal even had server rentals for it right away.  This featured on a number of blogs I followed.

I thought about jumping into this… but wasn’t quite convinced.  Close, but not quite there.

Then there was Enshrounded, which is also on my Steam wishlist and which also tickled the shared world co-op aspect of my desires, and which was also featured on G-Portal server rentals, and which had also grabbed the interest of some other bloggers.  It sounded good and I thought about grabbing it, yet another early access title.  But I haven’t so far.

And then this week Nightengale landed on Steam, once again in the suvival co-op crafting genre, and once again grabbing a few people I know, including a couple of the bloggers in the neighborhood. (Belghast was on about it yesterday, as was Bhagpuss.)  It is in early access and might need some work, but it did catch my eye.  Private servers are not a thing it seems, instead you can share your part of their world with just your friends if I read things correctly… which also means when thier servers are down you’re not playing.

I am sure there was also something else out there that popped up… Last Epoch maybe, or was it some other title… I don’t remember all of them.  But it did feel like the universe had decided to mock me a bit for my desire for a Valheim-like co-op experience by throwing all of these new and tempting options at me after I committed to the Valheim.

Then again, I am happy playing Valhelm right now.  It has an ease about it that can soak up hours of time,  We have been moving through the opening biomes at a quick pace, but that has been helped along by mods and familiarity, which isn’t a bad thing.  I suspect that we will slow down a bit at the plains, and that the mistlands will take us long enough to conquor that the ashlands will have finally arrived by the time we finish off that boss, which will give us another biome to master.

So I feel the temptation of these other titles, the fear of missing out if I am not there at the beginning the way I was for Valheim.

On the other hand, if those titles are any good, they’ll be there waiting for us.  And I also know that the last three years has seen Valheim improve a great deal.  As the song says, fools rush in… and sometimes they get the best seats, and other times they pay the price for being too early on the scene.