In a world that remains anything but normal, gaming has become a source of companionship and catharsis. The game industry has struggled to keep up as major releases like Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarök have once again been delayed by the pandemic. But you'd be hard pressed to find a year with more breadth. Over 11 thousand unique titles were released to the online marketplace Steam, thousands more than any other year. Consoles like the Xbox Series X, PS5, and Nintendo Switch each deepened their catalogs with new franchises and remasters of old classics, and independent games enjoyed heightened visibility at The Game Awards and on platforms like YouTube and Twitch.

Valheim went live on Steam exactly five weeks ago, and it's been on fire ever since. Iron Gate's Viking survival sim rocketed up the charts, hitting 5 million copies sold after just one month in Early Access and surpassing huge titles like Dota 2 in terms of concurrent active players. Steam reviews for Valheim exude a palpable sense of awe and relief. Players regularly compare the feeling to the first time they played Minecraft, marveling at the game's scope, depth and atmosphere, and questioning how a team of just five developers managed to pack such an engrossing experience into a 1GB download. Valheim sets players loose in an original realm of Viking purgatory, a vast, procedurally generated world filled with mythical Norse beasts, high seas, hunting and crafting.

"Valheim," a Viking-themed survival game, has attracted frenzied attention from content creators and players with moments like these. The indie game, which was released as an early access title on February 2, commands a large audience on the PC games storefront Steam, at one time logging just under half a million concurrent players. Coming in just behind classic titles such as "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" and "Dota 2," "Valheim" is the most popular indie game on Steam, according to Steam Charts. Its publisher Coffee Stain estimates it has sold over five million copies, at $19.99 a copy.

Valheim is Steam's latest top-selling, out-of-nowhere indie game, and from some angles, it sure looks the part. Depending on what screenshots you stumble upon, you might get some serious PlayStation 1 nostalgia vibes, with characters, animals, and trees that look straight out of the first '90s Tomb Raider game. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast. We've seen this before when it comes to Steam Early Access hits, usually because a game maker spends more time on gameplay and depth, not screenshots.