Enshrouded Preview – Surviving Made Easier

The survival genre is one that’s never entirely worked for me. I find life stressful, so playing games that emphasize stress, resource management and survival in the off hours hasn’t appealed. But Keen Games, the studio behind Portal Knights, let me watch roughly an hour of gameplay of its new survival game Enshrouded behind closed doors, and I came away excited about everything it’s doing to alleviate the stresses of the genre. 

Keen Games describes Enshrouded is an open world survival action RPG, set in a magical post-apocalyptic fog-covered fantasy universe. A powerful force known as The Flame brings a person back to life. You are then free to choose what you want. Immediately, Enshrouded creative director Antony Christoulakis explained that the “survival” part of the game’s genre description doesn’t mean you instantly die if you don’t drink or eat enough food. 

That kind of resource management doesn’t play into your survival outside of combat. That’s because the effects of food and drink tie back into combat and exploration. The water gives stamina, endurance, and energy to chop longer wood before you run out. While wolf’s meat increases your constitution so you can be tougher in the face of nature. There aren’t water and food gauges threatening your character’s survival at all times – these are resources to tap into when heading into combat, where you’ll need all the endurance you can get, or when chopping trees and requiring more stamina. This is a refreshing change of perspective for the survival genre. 

Looking beyond the survival aspect, Enshrouded looks like what you’d expect out of a fantasy-action RPG. It looks like the combat is fun and easy, although I watched a game developer playing it. They are probably experts at their own games at this stage. Christoulakis cites From Software’s Soulsborne games and Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as inspiration for Enshrouded’s combat but says it’s “not exactly like any of these.” Notably, Keen Games didn’t try to make it as challenging as a Soulsborne game, but parries, dodges, stuns, and more are all critical aspects of the action. There’s an entire skill page to morph your character into a warrior, ranger, mage, and more, but you aren’t locked to any one path. And these skills aren’t combat-specific either. 

Outside of combat, a lot of what you do in Enshrouded is based on exploration – finding dungeons to conquer, traversing through the fog to discover more of the large map, and rebuilding the world using the remains of the past. 

The building and craft work looks deep, but in a way that is approachable. The options are endless when it comes to building your house, from the pre-built stairways that can be easily added (if you possess the necessary resources) to single bricks or stone. The building reminds me most of Fortnite’s easy-to-access but fun-to-master building. 

Enshrouded is a big step away from Keen Games’ previous game, Portal Knights, but it’s one I’m looking forward to learning more about. It may seem like a pretty typical fantasy action-RPG, but digging deeper you’ll find some unique twists to the survival genre. This is a genre that I normally avoid. Enshrouded’s achievement is that it has made me want to learn more about survival games. It’s due out via Steam Early Access sometime this year, and I look forward to seeing if Enshouded feels as fun to play as it looked.