To celebrate 5 years in early access, Valheim gets a new hat, better Steam Deck performance, and—wait for it—frosted sweetbread

It's been five years since Valheim revitalized the survival craft genre. At the time I remember thinking "why would anyone want to play a new game in this style when there's already Minecraft, Ark and Rust?". With the benefit of hindsight I know that two things worked in Valheim's favour. One was its clever finetuning of survival and building systems that still felt really clunky in competing games, and which many have since adopted. The other thing was Vikings. Valheim ruled so much that it was our favourite game of 2021...