I’m a sucker for a good survival RPG with an open world and Enshrouded has not disappointed. Developed and published by German studio Keen Games GmbH, Enshrouded was released via early access this month. If the online chatter around the future of the game holds any truth, this title has huge potential.

Long ago, a magical Elixir was brought to the Kingdom of Embervale in the pocket of a traveller. Once concealed by the Ancients due to its sheer power, humans discovered the Elixir and believed it to be a blessing and a cure. Over time, humanity dug huge Elixir wells with mindless need as the people waged wars against each other and ripped apart the Kingdom for the Elixir. From these wells, however, a curse crept into the land, releasing a fog called the Shroud across the land, devouring everything it encountered.

Facing their extinction, humanity and the Ancients united to create the Flameborn, the last hope for a world being consumed by the Shroud. Governed by the Flame, the Flameborn are tasked with reclaiming the Kingdom from the deadly fog and saving humanity.

After creating your character with the diverse presets and customizability options, you awaken alone within the Cinder Forge, you converse with the Flame who tells you that you’ve slept for too long, and the Kingdom of Embervale has fallen already. The story of the Flameborn is told through various quests given to you by the Flame at first. Easing into a tutorial of world interactions including how to manage your hunger, thirst, and comfort, you are to construct a flame altar and build yourself a base to keep yourself safe from the creatures that lie within the Shroud.

Levelling up your base through the Altar expands your building range and gives you the ability to create more than one base across the world. The base building is free-form, but it wouldn’t hurt to add a snapping option as it can be a little tedious to get the pieces in the right spot.

As you collect resources, basic blueprints are unlocked. These can range from construction materials such as wooden and stone blocks for base building, furnaces for cooking food, storage containers, etc. You also level up your character through resource collection, defeating enemies, and completing quests. The massive skill tree allows you to specialise in 12 roles ranging from Beastmaster to Assassin to Battlemage.

Throughout the game, you come across survivors who can request things from you such as finding other survivors or crafting certain recipes you can only get through them specifically. For instance, your first survivor is a blacksmith who can craft stronger weapons and armor than you could on your own, and he tasks you with creating a stronger weapon through his art. These NPCs remain at your base, ready to help whenever you need them.

Base-building and survival aside, there is a unique, tense nature to the game. When you enter the fog, you become “Enshrouded”. This begins a timer, which in the early game is 5 minutes. Before the timer expires, you need to get out of the fog or simply just die to it. Some certain potions and skills can be used to increase the timer on this but knowing you can’t just run around to collect resources only found in the Shroud makes it nerve-racking when you’re forced to keep your eye on the clock.

The enemies within the Shroud can be ruthless, with the gaming pulling influence for the combat from the souls-like genre, it is designed in a way to be welcoming to new players of the survival game genre.

Based on my experience with the bosses in the Elixir Wells, I’d agree that Keen Games’ vision for this works. In the open world, it plays a bit like a hack-and-slash where you can just swing your sword without much thought. The bosses are not the easiest and do require some level of problem-solving to be defeated.

According to the Enshrouded website, The Holistic game engine was created by Keen Games themselves and is “specifically designed and optimized” for building Enshrouded. This game is beautiful, and it’s insanely impressive for it to be built on the indie studio’s own in-house engine. Taking inspiration from the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Valheim, the landscapes are vast, detailed, and immersive. The map is huge and has plenty of unique spots to discover.

The day and night cycle adds to the immersion, with the sounds of crackling fires and chirping bugs more prominent during the night, and the grassy footsteps and howling winds taking centre during the day. I often found myself neglecting my quests and just exploring derelict villages or hunting for a new base location. It just has awoken a new sense of adventure I haven’t felt in an open-world RPG for a long time.

Enshrouded is fantastic, and it’s a brilliant starting point for this game’s lifespan. It has so much potential to be one of the greatest in the genre, and with the development of a solid roadmap, I do not doubt that it will be. The game’s bosses might be seen as a bit challenging for someone new to this genre, but it won’t take long for beginners to master the controls and survival aspects of the game. Overall, I’ll be watching the further development of Enshrouded very closely.

Written by: Emily France