Before you begin, emphasize that this is an analysis of a game that is under active development. We will return to Enshrouded once Early Access is complete and the full version is released for final review.
Almost every year a new game in the survival genre appears and takes Steam users by storm. I remember games like Green Hell, Valheim, and Conan Exiles, just to name a few. The last one to arrive and shake the foundations of the industry was Palword, but Enshrouded is also coming with a vengeance and people have welcomed it with open arms, so I’ve embarked on an adventure in a broken world where survival is just as important is like ambition. Enshrouded is developed by Keen Games, can be played on Steam and will later be released for PS5 and Xbox Series.
The first thing you notice when starting the game is that the style is very simple but clean. You create your character who must survive, and then you are thrown into the beautiful world of Embervale. The world was destroyed after wars to provide people with a magical elixir that would give them power and strength. They dug too far underground to get the potion, but in the end it released a blue mist that began to take over the world. In response, The Flameborn was created, which you become when you awaken. Everything is pretty much inspired by FromSoftware’s work, implicit and little told. Anyone who prefers the narrative style will love it.
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After all this, you must build and survive as best you can and investigate the tragic history and fall of Embervale. In various places you will find texts that tell the history of the world, focusing in particular on what humanity has done to escape the magical fog in which you cannot stay for long. It’s a dropper narrative, and there may only be a few droplets depending on how adventurous you are.
Enshrouded has taken inspiration not only from FromSoftware’s narrative, but also a lot from Link’s latest adventure, and that shows in both the way it tells the story and the way it presents the world builds. To me it seems like a Zelda with a survival touch, but more on that later. Enshrouded has two aspects: the first is construction and survival, the second is exploration and combat. Let’s look at the survival part first.
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Like many other survival games, Enshrouded requires you to build a lot, mine a lot, and generally survive in a world that seems empty and unforgiving. Embervale is in line with similar games in the genre, and first you have to collect resources, extract minerals and get food. There is nothing original here. If you’ve played similar games, you’ll feel right at home here. You build around a flame, which you can upgrade to gain benefits like more space to build and the ability to stay in the blue mist longer.
You have to build houses, beds and tools to be able to collect resources etc. faster. It works, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not very original either. The game tries to teach you how everything works, but there are gaps in the learning curve that led to frustration during my time with the game. For example, you need to find craftsmen to design new devices, and first you need to find a blacksmith. The game then asks you to build a forge for it, but forgets to tell you to build around it or move it, otherwise it will just sit there and if it’s not protected your building won’t count as a forge. It took me too long to guess and I think the developers could have described the task in more detail. I have experienced this lack of description several times and it bothered me. The construction itself is also not intuitive. You have to build everything from your character’s point of view, and when you build a house you have to build scaffolding and stuff like that to position the walls and roofs the way you want, and that didn’t work for me. I hope it will be easier in the future.
Once you’ve built a lot, have weapons and equipment, you need to go out and explore. You don’t really have a choice because the skilled workers you need have to be found in the open world. The same applies to rarer raw materials. At first it takes a long time to move because you have to cover long distances, but very early in the game you have access to a “glider” and a grappling hook that can be used to lift you onto certain ledges. It’s a trick stolen from Zelda and doesn’t work as well as it does in the Nintendo series. Several times I floated where I wasn’t supposed to and the hook didn’t do what I wanted. This is particularly problematic since you can’t stay in the blue mist for long without dying. That’s why you should get out quickly when there is only a minute left, otherwise it will end tragically for your character. Enshrouded may be in Early Access, but these things need to be in order. However, it works well for the most part and there are definitely what we would call “juicy parts.” But the meat you find there is currently too unevenly distributed.
And while we’re at it: The combat system also comes from Zelda, and, as in this game, you have perseverance, both when planning and when fighting. This resistance is a hindrance because you don’t have much to begin with and so you often get killed because you can’t do anything but run away when it’s empty. And you don’t want to get killed since you have to walk a lot to get your stuff back, especially in the beginning. Luckily, you keep your equipment and weapons when you die. The combat system is kind of like “Zelda Light” and at first you can’t do a lot of things. You can unlock skills as you progress through the game, but it takes a long time to reach the top of the skill tree. So if you are an impatient player, Enshrouded is not the best for you.
However, Enshrouded deserves some praise because the world is beautiful and atmospheric and you can tell it’s handcrafted. The sunrise over one of the many ruins you explore is magical, and the music is bombastic and grandiose when it’s present. In addition, you can find weapons from normal to legendary, like in various role-playing games. This means you can get cool weapons without having to spend hours collecting silver, which is great and another thing Keen Games was inspired by. The only original thing about this game is the way it takes designs from other games and puts them together into a new whole that will be highly recognizable to fans of both RPGs and survival games.
Enshrouded is a decent survival game that needs more time in the oven. It borrows a lot from other, better games and tries to create a new and exciting set. It may not be entirely convincing, but it has potential. That’s why I’m excited to see what Keen Games will do with Enshrouded in the coming months, otherwise I think its popularity will quickly decline as people develop new game design options. Weaker ones who are not yet where they need to be.
