You cleared the Forsaken, your longhouse is a monument to bad planning, and now you want games like Valheim: explore, gather, build a base, fight bosses with friends. "Like Valheim" means different things, though. Some people want the Norse boss ladder. Some just want a great base builder. Some need something that runs on a potato, and some want a bigger group than a handful of friends. So instead of one flat ranking, I've sorted these by what you're missing. Heads up: every Steam game here is paid. If you wanted free games like Valheim, there's a short section on that near the end.
Prices are Steam list prices as of October 2026 (US store). Sales are constant, so check the store before you buy. Platforms are the Steam (PC) builds.
What game is most like Valheim?
Short answer: Enshrouded, if you want the closest look at the same idea with voxel building and groups of up to 16. Core Keeper, if you want a lighter, cheaper version of the explore-build-beat-a-boss loop. Everything else on this page is the same itch from a different angle.
Quick picks
| Game | Best if you loved | Co-op (per Steam) | Steam list price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enshrouded | Boss progression, building | Up to 16 players | $39.99 |
| Core Keeper | Bosses, base, low-end PC | 2-8 players | $19.99 |
| V Rising | Building a castle, boss fights | Online co-op (and PvP) | $34.99 |
| Icarus | Big groups, your own server | Up to 8 players | $34.99 |
| Conan Exiles | Building huge bases | Single-player, co-op or persistent multiplayer | $39.99 |
| Sons of the Forest | Survival and crafting, with horror | Online co-op | $29.99 |
| Grounded | A lighter PC, backyard survival | Up to 4 players | $39.99 |
| Valheim (for reference) | The original | 1-10 players | $29.99 |
| Minecraft, Terraria | Building, digging | See my sibling pages | See my sibling pages |
Is Valheim still worth coming back to?
If you left before 1.0, yes, look again. Valheim 1.0 came out on September 9, 2026, and the developers have kept patching it since, with 1.0.17 on October 6 and 1.0.20 on October 15. It's still a 1-10 player game with player-hosted servers, a boss in every biome, and base building with structural integrity. On Steam it's $29.99 for Windows, Mac and Linux.
If you loved the boss progression
Enshrouded
My top pick. Steam calls it a solo and co-op survival action RPG, with co-op for up to 16 players. You get skill-tree combat, a settlement of rescued survivors, and the Shroud, a fog zone you fight your way through. Steam shows a 1.0 launch trailer on the page. The building is the real hook: it's voxel-based, and the land is fully terraformable, so you can dig into the ground and reshape it, not just build on top of it. It's $39.99, Windows only. Steam had it at 10% off ($35.99) when I checked, but sales bounce around.
The catch is the PC. Minimum is an i5-6400 or Ryzen 5 1500X, 16 GB of RAM, a GTX 1060 6GB and 60 GB of storage. That's well above Valheim's own minimum.
Core Keeper
The easy recommendation. Steam lists it as a 1-8 player mining sandbox, with 2-8 player drop-in, drop-out online co-op. You dig into the dark, fight bosses called Titans, farm, fish, automate and build a base. You can host your own dedicated server. It's $19.99 on Windows and Linux (no Mac build), and it hit 1.0 in August 2024. The big difference from Valheim is the camera: it's top-down and 2D, so it feels more like a mining game than a Viking one. It's also the best budget pick on this page.
V Rising
You're a vampire, not a Viking. You build a castle, turn humans into thralls and take down bosses. It came out of early access on May 8, 2024. The camera is top-down, and Steam lists online co-op alongside PvP, with the page talking about both competing and cooperating. So it's not a pure friends-versus-the-world game like Valheim. It's $34.99, Windows only.
If you loved the base building
Enshrouded is the pick here, because of the terraforming. After that:
Conan Exiles ($39.99, Windows only) is on Steam as Conan Exiles Enhanced, an Unreal Engine 5 upgrade. You can play single-player, co-op or on a persistent multiplayer server, and you can host your own server. It's a big-base game: Steam talks about building entire cities. It also has PvP and siege wars on public servers, so it's rougher than Valheim. The install is huge, 115 GB minimum, and it came out in May 2018.
Sons of the Forest ($29.99, Windows only) is the odd one. It's a first-person survival game on a cannibal-infested island, so it's horror, with intense violence. Not one for kids. You do craft and build cabins and a seaside compound, though, and you can play alone or with friends. It came out on February 22, 2024.
If building is what you really want and combat is optional, my roundup of the best building games goes much wider.
If you want multiplayer games like Valheim for a bigger group or your own server
Enshrouded takes up to 16 players. Core Keeper takes up to 8 and lets you host a dedicated server. Icarus ($34.99, Windows only) is a sci-fi PvE survival game for up to 8 co-op players, either in missions or in a persistent open world. Steam says its dedicated servers are free to run and recommended for open-world sessions. It's heavy, with a 70 GB install and a GTX 1060 6GB minimum, and it has plenty of paid DLC on top. Valheim itself supports player-hosted servers if you want to keep your old world going.
If your PC is low end
Valheim's own minimum is 8 GB of RAM and a GTX 950. Core Keeper is lighter than that: an i5-2300 or Ryzen 3 1200, 8 GB of RAM and a GTX 460. Grounded ($39.99, Windows only) is lighter still on paper, with a minimum of an i3-3225, 4 GB of RAM and a GTX 650 Ti. It's a first-person survival game where you've been shrunk to ant size in a backyard. You build, craft and fight giant insects with up to three friends, and the Shared Worlds feature lets you keep playing in a shared world when the host is offline. It came out in September 2022.
Skip the big installs if storage is tight: Conan Exiles (115 GB), Icarus (70 GB) and Enshrouded (60 GB).
The voxel answer: Minecraft
Minecraft is the obvious next step if what you loved about Valheim was building and wandering a big world with friends. Treat it as the building game. For details, prices and where to play, my list of games like Minecraft and my guide on how to play Minecraft with friends are better than a line from me. If you're coming from the 2D side, I also did games like Terraria, which has its own boss-ladder picks.
Free games like Valheim?
None of the Steam picks above are free. Each one is a paid purchase. If free is the point, the one I'd look at is Luanti, an open-source voxel game creation platform that runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, BSDs and Android. You can play alone, with friends on your local network, or online with dozens of players on a server. But be clear about what you're getting. It's a platform, so what you play is a game or mod pack from its content database, and it isn't a Valheim-style boss ladder. It's the pick for voxel building and survival with friends. My Minecraft vs Luanti comparison covers how it works and whether it's for you.
So which one should you play?
Want the closest thing to Valheim: Enshrouded. Want bosses on a budget or a weak PC: Core Keeper. Want a vampire castle: V Rising. Want a big group with your own server: Icarus. Want to build a city and don't mind PvP: Conan Exiles. Want horror: Sons of the Forest. Want something light: Grounded.
If you're open to something different
Folly isn't a Valheim-like. There's no boss ladder. It's a free, standalone voxel game for PC, no purchases required, where every player gets a personal universe that starts as one small island in the void. It's coming soon in early access, so expect it to keep changing once it's out. If that sounds good, here's how the island loop works, and you can claim your universe name.