Delverium: eight players, a generated world, and permission never to enter a dungeon

There is a line in Delverium's description that ought to appear on more survival games: play how you like.

That is not an empty phrase here, because the game genuinely lets you ignore half its content.

The four games in the box

The studio phrases it itself: casual farming, settlement building, exploring the unknown or delving into dangerous dungeons. Your choice.

Crafting and building. You unlock and craft a huge array of items, food, tools, weapons, armour and building materials. You build shelters for safety, and recruit non-player characters who provide trading options.

The farm. You till, sow, water, watch things grow. You breed animals, catch fish, gather wild ingredients, and combine it all in a wide range of cooking recipes to eat or trade.

Exploration. Exotic biomes, hidden caves and dangerous dungeons abound. You mine, collect rare materials, unearth lost treasures.

And the story. A great peril is infecting the land, and you have to uncover lost fragments of lore and hunt down the Faults to piece together the hidden truth.

The important point is that none of those four activities is mandatory to progress in the others. That is rare, and it is what makes this kind of game pleasant to play with people who do not like the same things you do.

Multiplayer, very generous

That is the game's most concrete argument.

Up to eight players online, and four in split screen.

Four-player split screen is a rarity worth flagging. Most survival games abandoned the sofa a decade ago, and finding a sandbox playable by four on the same television is a genuine argument for families and for evenings in.

One small comfort detail that also counts: the studio highlights nested crafting and an expandable inventory. Those are the two features that separate a pleasant survival game from a chore of bag management.

What to know

The game launches today in early access, developed and published by Sagestone Games, with no price displayed and no reviews as I write.

My reservation belongs to the genre, and it is severe: the survival sandbox with crafting, farming, building and dungeons is probably the most crowded category on Steam. To exist you need either a strong idea or flawless execution.

Delverium is visibly betting on the second, with a broad, well-equipped proposition rather than a single find. That can work, but it is judged over time and on follow-up, not on three hours.

What works in its favour is precisely the eight-player multiplayer and the split screen. Plenty of competitors are better at one specific thing; few are this welcoming.

Farm or dungeon? The question divides on the InsertCoins Discord.