Enshrouded Preview

Generally, survival crafting RPGs the likes of Conan or Valheim are a nightmare for my ADHD. My experience usually goes a little something like this: “I want to craft this armor, okay I need steel sheets, which means I need to craft scrap metal, also I'll need string, which means I need to craft...oooh what's in that cave? Hey sweet bow! I wanna make a new building”...get killed in said cave, “Hey I should craft new armor!” Wash, rinse, repeat. Of course, all of this is an overgeneralization, but suffice it to say I struggle with devising and sticking with my own gameplay loop. This usually results in me being smitten for about 20 hours, pouring all of my energy into making the coolest building I can render, then burning out and falling off completely, as it wastes away in my Steam backlog. Just ask my half-dozen abandoned Viking settlements in Valheim. I can, however, say that I genuinely enjoyed the eight-hour trial period I had with Enshrouded. Admittedly, that may have less to do with anything the game actually does to set itself apart from its contemporaries, and more to do with the game sitting snugly in the high fantasy, swords and sorcery genre that has always been my comfort zone. It threads the needle of wearing its inspirations on its sleeve, while not feeling too derivative. You can certainly see influence from Breath of the Wild with its focus on puzzle-based tower climbing to reveal more of the map, as well as a stamina system that drains with nearly every action you take, including gliding through the air from great heights. I also noted a suitably epic “first coming out from the dark cave to a vast inviting sandbox, injected with a healthy dose of lens flair” moment, à la Breath of the Wild or Fallout 3.

But the bread and butter of these games, as the genre implies, is crafting and survival. How does this game hook you into its systems? And does it set itself apart from the overabundance of games that seem to be popping up on your Steam page every week? Well, the game predictably starts you off in the aforementioned cave, first navigating you to a safe meadow area to begin setting up your first base. It will send you on a variety of fetch quests to gather materials to get you started with Enshrouded’s crafting systems. The crafting itself felt very intuitive. Picking up new materials around the world or looting from enemies will unlock new recipes. Creating new stations and crafting tools for further resource gathering, will increase your list of weapons, armor, or building pieces. This is a fairly typical loop, but why fix what isn’t broken? One thing I did notice is that the location of materials from the world was not always intuitive. I would find something that clearly looked like a boulder that would not yield stone, even though hacking away at it rendered an animation of clear stones splashing about. I spent much of my opening time thinking that my only option for gathering this resource was picking up loose stones on the ground. I did eventually discover that there were earthen structures that would yield stone using a pickaxe, but the visual difference compared to other spots that would not yield this material needed better distinction. Another example: the game would let me break down a giant steel barrel, but not a wooden barrel in the same area. Nothing major, but it stuck out, and I would appreciate a little more consistency. You have various tools, such as axes for chopping wood, pickaxes for mining, etc. One difference that has the potential to bring more life into your settlement and set itself apart is the need to rescue NPCs in order to have certain crafting stations. For example, one of the first things the game had me do after setting up a simple base camp was going to a distant cave system and rescuing a blacksmith. I then built a magical wand that would allow me to spawn him in a location, as well as build a smelter and smithy. It was at that point I could start crafting more advanced armor. This NPC was very static, standing in one single spot day and night. Hopefully, in the final release we will see them have more active schedules. Ideally, you would need to build him a cottage and bed so he’s able to rest at night and maybe even fiddle around with the equipment at their station. I’m always a sucker for anything that breathes more life into the NPCs and makes the world feel more alive. Building itself was about where you would expect a beta version to be, with snapping never quite attaching itself exactly where you would like it to be.

One of my favorite aspects of this game, by far, was the traversal mechanics. Remember earlier when I referenced a gliding mechanic similar to BotW? Well, think of that but more of a squirrel suit. The speedy soaring through the air gives it an excellent feeling of thrill and momentum. Because of this, you do lose lift much quicker and will need to set your landing target closer, as you won’t be soaring halfway across the map. I think this is excellent balancing in a game that is focused on exploration. Speaking of momentum, the game also has you build a grappling hook, allowing you to swing over gaps or pull yourself to otherwise unreachable places. This tool feels fast and snappy, always keeping your movement fluid, and once unlocked, it was one of my favorite ways to navigate the world. In addition to giving it a light Metroidvania feel, there are also puzzles within dungeons that require this tool for platforming and puzzle-solving. However, currently when climbing up and over a ledge, it sort of just clips your character where it needs to be. Hopefully, we will see a mantling animation added for the future release. I can also see a benefit to adding different tier levels for the glider that increases the distance that it can travel or a longer rope for the grappling hook to cross wider gaps more quickly. Overall, I would say if I were to pick one thing that the developers should zero in on to help set their game apart, it would be going all in on the use of these fun items for world exploration, as well as giving the NPCs that you rescue and recruit more AI to breathe some life and immersion into the camps, cities, or towns that you build.

My main gameplay loop revolved around preparing myself for the dungeons that would lie in the titular “enshrouded” areas. These are foggy areas of the map where strong fungal-like creatures prowled for new adventurers and quickly became the most engaging part of my time in Enshrouded. I became genuinely unnerved the first time I left the comfort and safety of the bright green meadow I had set up camp, making my way down a switchback leading to the bottom of a deep tear in the earth. The music turned dour, the lighting dimmed, and in the foggy distance at the bottom of the canyon, I spotted pale, gaunt creatures shuffling lifelessly in my path. In these areas you have a timer that represents the fog eating away at your life force, and you can consume items from your inventory that can be found around the world, or pick up tools in the environment that will extend or replenish this meter. This represents an excellent balance of risk versus reward, as many of the areas have you seeking out resources to keep your timer up and going just a little bit longer while you push a little further hoping for that one last legendary item or just a few more materials to bring back to your base. Typically, these enshrouded areas would contain a small dungeon, ending in a boss fight that would drop valuable resources, and in many cases a rarer item. Some materials can only be found in these areas so visiting them will be virtually unavoidable — it’s a great thing they made them so engaging. As soon as I saw my first legendary ax drop, I knew this was going to be an activity that I would regularly be coming back to.

As far as technical issues, I was surprisingly impressed with the polish of the beta. Of course, there were unfinished animations and systems, but nothing that felt like it was distracting me from the parts I was enjoying. In one section, I found a locked chest that said I didn’t have a lockpick, even though I did, but it still opened the chest and took the item from my inventory. In other areas, there would be animations clearly missing. As I mentioned earlier, any mantling would just clip me through the ledge. I also noticed a few times when I died that my remains would be quite a ways off from where I died. I know games don’t want to leave your body in an area that you can’t retrieve, but there were situations where I clearly died in the intro of the area, and my body would be a significant distance further into the area, past enemies and other hazards. I only experienced one actual crash. This happened in the beginning when I was fiddling with the settings and adjusting the graphics. Finally, I wouldn’t so much call this a technical issue but the day/night cycle is immediate and that’s very distracting. There isn’t a separation screen à la Majora’s Mask, telling you a new day has come. Or, more traditionally, a gradual change in environmental lighting as the sun rises and falls. Instead, in the blink of an eye the lighting changes from middle of the day to midnight dark.

All told I would have to say if you are not typically a fan of open-world survival games, then this is not the one to sway you. If you are already absorbed in a game of this type, this one is not going to pull you away from it. However, if this has been a genre that you are curious about, and just haven’t found the one, or even if you have a general soft spot like myself, and are looking for more large open worlds to explore, this would be an excellent title to keep your eye on. The quick, snappy traversal mechanics and the variety of dungeons and puzzles kept the game from feeling stale even in an early build of the game. The tense, shrouded areas felt unnerving and effective. The game seems a promising refinement of games with similar mechanics, while offering just enough unique qualities to keep from getting lost in the pack. The game is set to release into early access on January 24th of next year, and you can get it on Steam. A console launch is planned for “some time in the future,” but no specific word on a timeframe for those platforms.