Enshrouded Preview

The world has fallen into darkness after humanity found an Elixir deep underground. After mining for it and basking in its benefits, their greed and fixation brought The Shroud into the world, an all-consuming substance that has ushered a post-apocalyptic era. Now, it is your opportunity, as a newly awakened Flameborn, to restore humanity to its former glory... or at least as much as can be recovered.

This is the story of Enshrouded, the highly anticipated base-building open-world title by the creators of Portal Knights. It's already amassed a substantial following in its pre-release state, reaching the staggering achievement of being the top eighth most-wishlisted game on Steam at the moment. I've had the opportunity of being hands-on with the fittingly named Embervale over these last few weeks — does the hype translate into practice?

Enshrouded is coming out in Early Access, but there is already a substantial amount of content. Evident from the get-go is the staggeringly large open world that you can explore at will as you head north to explore the shrouded lands of Embervale. As Early Access titles go, Enshrouded is not really feature-complete, and from the information given by Keen Games GmbH, it seems like it is but a fraction of the size of what's to come.

You start the game by being able to host your world, play privately in single-player, or even head out to play with others in a 16-player limit per world. I had the utmost pleasure of experiencing this game both solo and with my wife, getting a good feel as to how the game manages both in terms of playing by your lonesome and experiencing it with someone else.

After being told the fate of Embervale, you awaken in a strange chamber with what feels like little guidance. However, soon thereafter, you start receiving quests that help you segment your gameplay, giving you an idea as to what you have to do and how to best approach it. You first begin your journey into a broken town, where you can start the voxel-based building mechanic and experience the free building that hasn't been explored to this depth in a survival craft yet.

Building feels surprisingly comfortable, though that doesn't mean it doesn't come without its hitches — precise, 1x1 block placement and destruction can be a bit uncomfortable. Its voxel-based building gives you full control of how you want to build the world and even create impressive structures, but that does come with the problem of dealing with the uncomfortable controls at times.

It's not all grim, and I wouldn't say it's a flaw by any means — for all intents and purposes, Enshrouded's building works well, considering you are placed in a third-person perspective. I'd have appreciated a more dedicated building mode, as it currently feels more like a slapped-on solution, where hard-to-reach blocks are difficult to place/destroy, and precise placement is difficult whilst your camera's offset due to a third-person perspective.

Outside of precision, however, Enshrouded offers great fun in terms of building and creativity, and that's a great addition to any survival title. As a Minecraft veteran who's been around since the Alpha stages, I can safely say it's obviously not as polished, but content-wise, you have a lot more going on in the furnishing and decoration department, which is a great step forward, giving you more reason to be in your base than a temporary resupply or hiding from the darkness.

This is enrichened by the need to build — though you'll fare well with a small block, there is a purpose to building something that is more of a base of operations. After waking up from the pod, you are tasked with reconstructing the world, which includes bringing in new villagers to the world. You'll start by finding a Blacksmith whose house you'll be tasked with building, but what's once a base of operations with little purpose aside from looking pretty slowly becomes a sprawling community (or, as sprawling as a post-apocalyptic world can be while you have to resurrect people manually).

It isn't mandatory, so those who don't have creative juices flowing won't be constricted to obligatorily building spry-looking towns, but it gives an extra objective beyond "survive and thrive" mechanics that can get boring for the min-maxing veterans of the genre. These inhabitants will work as quest givers and ensure that you continue having a goal beyond self-set projects and destinations — once you get the ball rolling, Enshrouded opens up a lot.

The survival crafting feels mixed in with a looter shooter feel that I haven't experienced in these sorts of games before. The first craftsperson you'll unlock is the aforementioned Blacksmith, who will be able to contribute to your armour and weapons by empowering you and ensuring that you can head out to fight The Shroud and its inhabitants with much more ease. Among his many tools of the trade (aside from being able to craft the ever-essential starting armour and weapons) is being able to upgrade what you already have.

Varying in rarity indicated by colour, you can find items in chests that are procedurally generated. Each chest can include (most commonly) a weapon or (more rarely) a piece of armour, and it works as an ascending difficulty that gives you the opportunity to head out, loot for items, and then upgrade accordingly — almost a roguelite feel to it all. Eventually, your backpack space will run out, and you'll need to head back to base, but that comes with the gratifying feeling of upgrading your equipment, keeping the upgrading-exploring-looting-upgrading gameplay loop entertaining.

Everything you don't need will be dismantled for the ever-essential Runes that you use to upgrade, and the rarity of your equipment will determine how much it'll cost to upgrade and what benefits you get per upgrade. This, then, loops into you heading out to explore areas, and with a mostly fully destructible environment, you're encouraged to look into nooks and crannies to find hidden doors with silver chests that'll contain high-quality items. The more items you find, the better reason you have to return to base, and then you head out to the world to explore new (sometimes riskier) locations in search of more loot.

You'll spend your time in Embervale heading out to the world to explore points of interest given to you by learning about them through the lore, quests that you get from the craftspeople, and massive towers (named Ancient Spires) that reveal locations around you. You can head out in any direction and find a settlement, an enemy, or a mountain to climb, and you'll often find gratification in senseless exploring through lore or points of interest. The more places you explore, the more quests you unlock, and the more you have to do/craft, which works great as a gameplay loop, giving you both the capability to create your own goals all the while ensuring you have clear ones to follow as well.

Though exploration feels fantastic, and the gameplay loop is gratifying, I didn't really feel I clicked with the combat as much as I'd hoped. You have a slew of choices to make from the perspective of a skill tree, giving you access to three combat styles: melee, ranged (bow & arrow), and magic. Within these three branches, you have an additional four styles that differ, from healer, battlemage, and wizard in magic to two-handed brute, tank, or sword-and-shield fighter.

It's all promising, but I didn't click well enough with the bosses and difficulty. It's not difficult, and it's a problem that plagues the entirety of Enshrouded for better or worse — it's just, simply, easy. A spam of the buttons here, a dodge roll there, and you'll defeat most enemies so long as your equipment and level are up-to-date. It's a quibble at best, though action-seeking adventurers might find it to be lacking at worst. Simplicity seeps into every aspect of the game, from generous Shroud resistance (that gets even stronger), easy material farming, and even exploration (though climbing mountains was a pain).

Considering I was playing in two-player co-op, I can only imagine it becomes much more of a prevalent issue the more players you invite to your party. As it stands, it's not so simple; it's a deal-breaker for most, but it does manage to feel lacking when you want to feel like you're struggling for survival — with no hunger, no thirst, and no difficulty options, its difficult to call it a "survival" when barely two hours into the game, you feel you're already thriving.

It's a simple issue to remedy and, in the long term, a minor quibble for its exploration merits. Were the game slightly more challenging (hopefully with difficulty options for those who prefer easier difficulties), Enshrouded would be fulfilling and complete gameplay-wise, or as much as an Early Access title can be when it's first released.

That all said, though, I did have a slew of performance issues that were less than riveting. A handful of crashes that led to progression loss were frustrating, but they were never replicated — killing the same enemy twice did not yield the same problem. There were some dungeons that lagged both my wife's and my own computer, which sporting a 40-series Nvidia card, shouldn't really be happening. But, as with the difficulty settings, it should be an issue that Keen Games GmbH should be able to overcome in due time. After all, it's an early look at an Early Access release for a game that is anticipating another year in development — the team deserves slack.

The game is still in Early Access, but the most devout players will find a lot of things to do. From full map exploration to massive settlements and fully upgrading flames or even venturing into points of interest, you can easily find dozens of hours of playtime, even in this first build. Of course, as with every survival crafting, your personal goals will affect how much playtime you get. But from trying to dig a hole into The Shroud to combat goals or building a sprawling settlement or castle, you can get a lot of experience from this title.

By no means is it releasing with small amounts of content, and given time, Keen Games GmbH has a promising foundation for their game, aiming for a one-year period of Early Access promising a larger map (yes, even larger), more biomes and environments, which means more enemies, more crafting components, and thus, more things to do. It promises to be a behemoth, though only time will tell if the team manages to do well on their word.