Valheim is more inspired by The Legend Of Zelda than it is survival games, says developer - Rock Paper Shotgun

Viking survival game Valheim has done some bloody big numbers since it launched earlier this month.

It briefly became the fourth most-played game on Steam in its very first week, and just a few days ago, developers Iron Gate Studios announced it had already sold over two million copies.

But according to the co-founder of Iron Gate Studios, Henrik Törnqvist, it takes more influence from singleplayer action-adventure games and RPGs like The Legend Of Zelda and Skyrim.

"We wanted to have more of a feeling of an old school, singleplayer adventure game, kind of like the older Zeldas," Törnqvist told PC Gamer.

Törnqvist says these slightly more forgiving systems were Iron Gate Studios CEO Richard Svensson's idea.

So, the first update, Hearth And Home, will focus on house building, giving players more things to do around their viking homes: "It will probably be pretty focused on the food preparation aspect of the game with more recipes and stuff like that," Törnqvist said.

Törnqvist said that when the game is finished, "there will be nine biomes with nine bosses, then we're also exploring adding mini-bosses and stuff like that."

He doesn't give any dates on when to expect all this, though it's worth noting Valheim's Steam page says the game will be in early access for around a year, "but depending on player feedback and the amount of content we choose to put into the final game, it may take longer"

Törnqvist also gave a little reminder that Iron Gate are a team of just five people, so they have a lot of work ahead of them

"The whole team is working on fixing all the bugs that come to light when you suddenly get a million people playing your game," he said