V Rising bites at Valheim, staking count at a million sales in wolfish first week

techradar.com:

V Rising wasted no time gazing at its own lack of a reflection in the mirror, instead crushing a million sales in its first week of early access. The dev team over at Stunlock Studios, previously responsible for the criminally underappreciated Battlerite, have been watching V Rising rapidly claw into Steam's concurrent players list. In its first week V Rising has climbed into the top 10 above titans like GTA 5, Elden Ring, and even survival-staple Rust, which V Rising takes a few design cues from.

V Rising goes to the deep well of base building and open PVP that Rust thrives on, but crosses it over with the ability to just chill with friends and hunt down bosses for cool new powers in PVE like viking-sim Valheim. Plus, you can decorate your gothic castle with all kinds of fancy carpets and spooky wrought iron fences. And make an entirely goofy looking vampire who seems more like a rejected Disney villain than an centuries old apex predator of the night.

1,000,000 Vampires have risen from their slumber! Thank you all for being part of this achievement! pic.twitter.com/p96f0E0pbVMay 24, 2022

V Rising brings a lot to the table for an early access game, so Stunlock's success isn't a huge surprise. The size of V Rising's map is expansive, it brings five full sets of abilities are already in, and there's plenty of castle stuff to build, even if I can never have enough V Rising leather. V Rising's monster mash has just the right blood type for future success, with additional content and options just lengthening the vampire buffet table.

More than any individual content though, V Rising is smooth and fun to control. The brief cooldowns on abilities mean I'm constantly trying to find the right pattern to use them in for each enemy