I have been steadily and thankfully avoiding the addiction that is Minecraft for pretty much my entire adulthood. Since its birth back in 2011, the ugly interface and bland creative building aspect have always been a huge turn-off for me when it comes to gaming experiences. I’m not sure why, but it reminds me of LEGOs without personality. Now, having ranted that out of my system, I fully realize my tastes are in the wrong. I just came in too late with the Minecraft world and didn’t fully grasp how exciting, creative, and fun it could be until it was too late. That is what happens when you’re old and set in your ways, kids. Avoid that when at all possible.
How all of that relates to this article is simple. Digitalchumps was invited to a sneak preview of Enshrouded from Keen Games. The game takes everything you might love about Minecraft, gives it an Elder Scrolls backdrop, and lets the player do pretty much what they want. While the preview was a hands-off ordeal, it was fascinating to see the depth of this game and how much potential it may have for those of us looking for something a bit more complicated than Minecraft.
Let’s get this preview going.
A story of survival and rebuilding
When the realm of Embervale is infested with a pestilence that is intent on wiping out its population, your Flameborn character must find a way to survive, thrive, and rebuild. How you do all of that and take on an ongoing story isn’t easy, but it seems like it’s going to be fun.
The story of Enshrouded isn’t at all complicated, as it pushes you to survive in a harsh world while at the same time asking you to help rebuild it. Sure, it’s a big ask, but it’s a good ask, especially when you consider the Populus-like personality this game pushes through its violent gods/ancestors that appear to have had enough with its residents. The whole world in the story is hanging on by a thread and you have to bring that thread back to weave a better world.
While the story here is simple, how to get that world back into proper shape appears to be the complicated part. It takes a lot of stacked pieces to make this world work well and the gameplay is a testament to how far the developers allow you to go. And they let you go far.
Complicated juggling act, but fun in its intentions to entertain
Enshrouded has a lot of moving pieces and parts to the game. The first big part, and the part most people will probably take to immediately is the action. To build up your character, you must confront baddies all over Embervale’s lands. This is akin to any open-world survival game, or very akin to a game like Skyrim, though less complicated in its structure. In the game, you can hunt to survive, hunt to craft, and battle to power your character up several levels to gain access to the next part of the gameplay. As any good open-world survival RPG would do, you start simple and become complicated as you start leveling to become a power to be reckoned with. This sort of action and leveling does include quests, hunting down bosses and baddies, and scavenging. A lot is going on here and all of it works beautifully.
On the surviving side, you can build out structures (MINECRAFT-Y!), raise crops, acquire residents to help populate your surroundings, and just go hog wild on making this world your own. While I’m not a huge fan of something that requires crafting, I can see the entertainment value of this game and I’m honestly impressed with how it seems to work.
Beginning with building, this aspect of Enshrouded is just so darn deep. Imagine that you’ve got a game like Skyrim, and you had every level tier (above and below ground) at your disposal. If you could build structures and shape those land tiers any way you wanted in a voxel-driven environment, then you would probably be in heaven. The sheer number of creative ways to build up the land in Enshrouded is going to get people to come to this game. The blueprint library that drives the building portion of the game, which contains all the pieces and parts to make structures, seems to be extensive, at least in the hands-off preview. This one aspect will keep people who like this sort of thing engaged for hours upon hours. I can see my oldest daughter falling into this and just spending so much time crafting and carving the world that she wants. Hell, this is so extensive, I might change my entire opinion of building and crafting. That’s a huge ‘might’, but a ‘might’ nonetheless.
In addition to building, the planting and crafting of items to populate these structures seem to be equally as big in size and worth their weight in gameplay gold. During the demo, we saw the player put plants in the ground to grow crops, which would equal harvesting and gathering. I’m sure all of what was planted was also involved with crafting, which means you have more of a purpose with this portion of the game beyond just survival. I’m sure that anyone who enjoys growing, harvesting, and using the material grown, especially those Minecraft folks, will take to this part of Enshrouded pretty darn well. Again, for me, who doesn’t love crafting, I can see how cool this might be.
If that wasn’t impressive enough for Enshrouded, you can also gather NPCs who can help you out by giving them a place to stay, growing food for them, and watching them help you out in return. That had to be some backend complication to developing that sort of proper cooperation between NPC and the player. There are probably so many ways that could have gone in the development process and it seems almost ambitious to work right out of the gate. So far, it appears the folks at Keen Games know what they’re doing, and we shouldn’t expect anything but a well-oiled and deep finished product in this area. From what we have seen so far, I’m seriously looking forward to how this game works out when it hits gold status.
This type of gameplay and execution looks to be right on track pulling several genres into one game. Lots of different players with different interests will certainly have to take notice of this game. Everything about Enshrouded is just pure crafting and action, and quite frankly it’s a good way to go when you’re trying to bring a deep and unique experience to gamers. This game looks like it could be quite good.
On that good note, let’s wrap this preview up.
Conclusion
Overall, what we saw with Enshrouded during our hands-off time was impressive. While it has all the gameplay elements that will keep a creative mind happy, its sprinkle of open-world action that caters to Skyrim fans will certainly pique the interest of many.
We will keep a close watch on this and hopefully report back when the finished product is done. Until then, keep an eye on Enshrouded.
