Announced back in May of this year, Enshrouded is the latest title from Keen Games, the team behind 2017’s Portal Knights. Currently scheduled to launch into Early Access later this year, the highly anticipated third-person action-RPG is shaping up to be a promising fantasy adventure. Luckily, we had an opportunity to sit down virtually with the game’s Creative Director, Antony Christoulakis, who showcased a chunk of hands-off gameplay with some additional commentary as well.
While Enshrouded shares a lot in common with the aforementioned Portal Knights — it’s another co-op survival RPG, after all — it appears to be a departure from the cutesy, cartoonish aesthetic found in its predecessor. Instead, it features a more realistic art-style and is set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world that has been plagued by a mysterious fog.
Narrative-wise, you assume the role of the “Flameborn”, one of mankind’s last hopes as civilization faces extinction from the billowing and corrupting mist known as the Shroud. To escape and survive, players must build, gather, and craft their way to freedom by dispelling the foul smog from the lands and piecing together the remains of the past.
At first blush, seeing Keen Games’ latest open-world RPG in action is reminiscent of 2017’s Conan Exiles or 2021’s Valheim. With its emphasis on building, crafting and surviving, there’s a lot of parallels between these titles. However, Christoulakis is quick to point out that Enshrouded has been designed to be more of a “survival-lite” experience, compared to other offerings of its ilk.
In fact, the game’s Creative Director went on to describe how the game is less of a “classical” survival experience where you have to constantly eat and drink just to stay alive. Rather, when you eat or drink, you’ll be rewarded with powerful buffs, which will help give you an edge in the game’s real-time combat (more on this later).
On top of the traditional building and crafting elements, Enshrouded is set to feature a deep skill tree where you can customise your playable character however you see fit. The three core classes — Ranger, Mage, and Warrior — each have their own abilities and players will be able to mix and match between them. For example, one ability in the skill tree allows you to befriend hostile animals, whereas another offered the ability to double jump.
In essence, it seems that the team’s design philosophy was to make leveling a liberating experience where the player always feels empowered and in control without feeling like they’ve locked themselves out of a particular route. This player freedom also extends to the building aspects of the game.
Interestingly, Enshrouded’s visuals are voxel-based, though it’s hard to discern the small cubes like you can in, say, the blocky world of Minecraft. Instead, aesthetically, everything looks realistic and sharp. It’s only until you start placing objects, mining cave walls, or modifying your builds will you begin to see the voxels that comprise the physical world around you. Meanwhile, you can mine and interact with almost every part of the world, with Christoulakis illustrating this by digging a tunnel through a wall of earth and coming out the other side.
While the bulk of your adventure will be spent traversing the surface of the landscape, there is some emphasis on vertical exploration, too. For instance, there are mines, cave systems and resources to discover as you dig deeper into the earth, though Christoulakis is swift to emphasize that this vertical exploration is not as prominent as in games like Minecraft.
Importantly, Enshrouded’s world will not solely be procedurally generated like it was in Portal Knights. In fact, much of the game has instead been hand-crafted to help with the game’s overall sense of discovery and sense of place. In addition, there’ll be no loading screens once you’re inside the experience, which is always welcome for immersion.
Christoulakis went on to give a quick shoutout to an unlikely inspiration: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Specifically, the team wanted to accentuate that liberating feeling of going wherever you want and stumbling upon landmarks, items or events that other players may’ve missed. In other words, if you can see it on the horizon, you’ll most likely be able to go there and explore that area.
The presentation then moved onto exploring the gorgeous world of Enshrouded as the Creative Director explained how the lower regions of the landscape have been engulfed in the titular Shroud. If players choose to venture into this toxic fog, they’ll sustain chip damage, but thankfully there are special beacons and items that allow you to endure the Shroud’s debilitating effects.
Next, we got a chance to see some of the game’s moment-to-moment combat and this is where the aforementioned Breath of the Wild influences began to crystallize even more. From ranged assaults with a bow to sneaking up on an enemy and delivering a devastating critical attack to parrying, there’s a lot here combat-wise which echoes Nintendo’s iconic open-world adventure.
Rounding out the preview, we had a glimpse of some of the base-building elements that you can expect in the game. Fortunately, the building system looks easy to pick up and pretty manageable as you place and manoeuver components in order to build your dream home. Further still, in addition to the physical building, you can also gather NPCs and place them in your home as well.
For example, in our preview, Christoulakis summoned a Blacksmith and placed him in his base, which helped improve his character’s overall crafting abilities and increased his list of crafting recipes. Furthermore, as you probably already could’ve guessed, you can even chat to your NPCs and they’ll give you additional information about the nearby environment.
Finally, we were given some details in regards to how the online multiplayer works. Enshrouded supports up to 16 players playing together online, which is a big jump from the 4-player co-op of its predecessor, Portal Knights. Moreover, the game will also support dedicated servers to help bolster its online stability. Meanwhile, for friends who join a more advanced server and are too under-leveled compared to their teammates, the game will employ some light enemy scaling to ameliorate any difficulty spikes.
Ultimately, we were impressed with what we saw during our hands-off preview event and look forward to seeing even more when Enshrouded launches on PC into Early Access later this year.
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Dylan Chaundy
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