Enshrouded: A New Survival Game Review

2024-02-05 13:00:00

Enshrouded is currently in early access, which is based on what developers currently charge. We’ll certainly be back, as the game leaves Early Access with an updated verdict.

Almost every year there is a new survival game that becomes popular among Steam users. I remember games like Green Hell, Hall of Valhalla, and Conan Exiles, just to name a few. The latest addition was Palword, but Enshrouded also stepped up and was welcomed with open arms, so I set out to find adventure in a broken world where survival is as important as ambition. Enshrouded is produced by Keen Games and is available to play on Steam; it will be released later on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S

When you start the game, the first thing you notice is that the style is very simple, yet clean. You create your character, who must survive, and then you are thrown into the beautiful world of Embervale. The world was destroyed after a war and a magical elixir was provided to humans that gave them strength and power. They dig too deep underground, but eventually release a blue mist that begins to take over the world. In response, “Children of Fire” were created, and this is what you will look like when you wake up. It’s all inspired by FromSoftware, implicit and unknown. If you like narrative style, you’ll like this.

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In the aftermath, you must build and survive as best you can, and investigate Embervale’s tragic history and downfall. Here and there you’ll find texts telling the history of the world, with a special focus on what humans have done to avoid the magical fog that you can’t stay in for too long. It’s telling the story drop by drop, and the drops can be few and far between, depending on how adventurous you are.
In addition to taking narrative inspiration from FromSoftware, Enshrouded also borrows heavily from Link’s latest adventure, and you can see it in the way the story is told and the world is built. To me, this feels like Zelda with a lot of survival, but more on that later. Enshrouded has two aspects: the first is building and surviving, the second is exploring and fighting.Let’s look at the survival part first

Like many other survival games, Enshrouded requires you to build a lot, mine a lot, and generally survive in a seemingly empty and unforgiving world. Embervale is consistent with similar games, first you need to collect resources, mine minerals, and obtain food. Nothing original here. If you’ve played similar games, you’ll feel right at home here. You build around the flames, which you can upgrade to gain advantages such as more building space and the ability to stay in the blue mist for longer.
You have to build houses, beds, and tools so you can gather resources faster, and so on. It works, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not very original either. The game tries to teach you how it all works, but there are gaps in the learning curve that led to frustration for me while playing the game. For example, you have to find a merchant who comes up with plans for a new piece of equipment, and you first have to find a blacksmith. The game then asks you to build a forge for him, but forgets to tell you that you have to build around him or move him, otherwise he’ll just stand there, and if he doesn’t have shelter, your building doesn’t count as a forge. It took me too long to guess this and I think the developers could have described the mission more accurately. I’ve experienced this lack of description many times and it annoys me. The build itself is also a bit unintuitive. You have to build everything from the character’s perspective, if you’re building a house you have to build scaffolding and stuff like that, put the walls and the roof the way you want, and that doesn’t work for me. I hope it will be easier in the future.
Once you’ve built a lot, and have weapons and equipment, you have to go out and discover. You really have no choice, as the professionals you need must be found in the open world. The same goes for rarer raw materials. Initially, it takes a long time to get around since you have to cover long distances, but early in the game you gain access to a “glider” and a hook that pulls you to certain ledges. Once again it’s stolen from Zelda and not as good as the Zelda series. I found myself floating where I wasn’t supposed to a few times and the hook wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do. This is especially a problem since you can’t stay in the Blue Mist for very long without dying, so you want to rush out when there’s only a minute left, otherwise your character will end miserably. Enshrouded is certainly in Early Access, but these things have to fall into place. It works fine for the most part, though, and definitely has what you would call “good bones.” But the meat you find on those good bones is too unevenly distributed like it is now.
While we were playing, the combat system was also from Zelda, you have stamina, just like in that game, when you hover and fight. This stamina is a hindrance because you don’t have much stamina to begin with and thus get killed frequently because you can’t do anything but run away when you’re empty. And you don’t want to get killed because you have to run a long way to get your stuff back, especially in the beginning. Fortunately, when you die, you keep your gear and weapons. The combat system is a kind of “Zelda light” in that you can’t do much at first. You can unlock abilities throughout the game, but it takes a long time to level up to reach the top of the ability tree. Therefore, if you are an impatient player, Enshrouded is not the best option.

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Enshrouded deserves credit, though, because the world is beautiful and atmospheric, and you can tell it’s all handcrafted. The sunrise over one of the many ruins you explore is magical, and the music while it’s there is bombastic and grand. Additionally, you can find weapons ranging from common to legendary, just like in various role-playing games. This means you can get cool weapons without having to spend hours collecting silver coins, which is pretty cool and another thing Keen Games was inspired by. The game’s only originality is the way it borrows designs from other games and combines them into a new whole, something that will be very recognizable to fans of both role-playing and survival games.
Enshrouded is a good survival game that needs more time in the oven. It borrows heavily from other, better games and attempts to create a new and exciting whole. It’s just not quite as successful, but there’s potential here, so I’m looking forward to seeing what Keen Games does with Enshrouded in the coming months, otherwise I think its popularity will wane quickly as people encounter harsher Game design choices that aren’t quite where they need to be yet.