"Is this going to be Valheim with party hats?": RuneScape: Dragonwilds devs know survival games are competitive and focus on "things that make us unique" in a tree-punching genre

Survival games, everybodies making them now, even old school MMOs. RuneScape: Dragonswilds is set within the universe you all know and love, but it's trying to bring new things to the genre rather than improving on what's already there.

In an interview with PCGamesN, senior community manager Jake Blunt talks about some of the thinking behind the upcoming game. The survival genre is a saturated one, even Player Unknown is getting in on it with Prologue: Go Wayback, but was all the competition and genre fatigue a concern for the developers?

"100%," Blunt says. "It was always top-of-mind. As soon as the team was like, 'survival game,' everyone was like, 'hm, is this going to be Valheim with party hats?' It was a case of going, 'okay, cool, we're going to have to do a lot more here to really elevate ourselves,' so there's always been a pressure not just externally, but internally. We want to make something that really stands up on its own that leans very heavily into RuneScape lore, but is also very much a survival game."

Rather than chopping trees down with an axe, you'll be using magical powers to summon an axe to do the work for you. I've recently been replaying Skyrim for the millionth time and am quite enjoying the bound weapons in the conjuration skill tree, so it's cool to see something like that come to a survival game.

"We’re hoping that it isn’t just us being like, 'it's Valheim, but…' [Dragonwilds] is unique in several different ways that really sets it apart from the others. There's always that pressure of, 'oh this is a very competitive [genre],' but we're not trying to bring other survival games down and be like, 'we’re better than that.' We want to embrace the fact that we have things that make us unique, rather than that we're doing something better than something that already exists."

Even if you're not a fan of the survival genre itself, the RuneScape coat of paint will likely be enough to sway a lot of you and give it a go. An IP trying its hat at a new genre is a surefire way to turn people into fans of either. I never played a MOBA until Pokemon Unite, and I haven't played RuneScape since I was 11, but I'd play this.

"We’re very lucky to have our narrative director Mod Raven, who has over a decade of experience working on RuneScape," Blunt says. "When he left RuneScape to work on other projects [in 2022], when this was announced internally, he came back. He's become the foundation and the bedrock of what RuneScape is, so that's helped us be reverent and respectful of both sides of the same coin. It’s been awesome."

RuneScape: Dragonwilds is launching in early access sometime this spring, so keep an eye out for it. It's set in the world of Gielinor, so if you're a fan of the game you should give it a go.

In the meantime, check out all the upcoming new games of 2025 to see what else you should play.