Enshrouded preview — Voxels, Pickaxes, and Wingsuits

Recently we had an opportunity to go eyes-on with Enshrouded, an upcoming Early Access survival crafting game from developer Keen Games. For those unfamiliar with Keen’s work, their previous work includes Portal Knights, Olympus Rising, Sacred 3, and others, but since 2016, Enshrouded has been their primary project. That’s a long development cycle, but after our hands-off demo, it’s very clear as to why.

Enshrouded casts the player as a “Flameborn”. You are the last and best hope of pushing back a mysterious and lethal fog slowly creeping across the land called “Shroud”. This Shroud permeates the land, consuming major sections of it and spawning horrible monsters, and worse. To combat this blight, the players must reshape the world, strike down the tide of evil creatures, and discover some way to ultimately destroy the Shroud once and for all.

The first thing that was immediately apparent was that Enshrouded was built with an entirely new and incredibly flexible engine. Purpose built, this new engine would allow Keen to provide players with options unique to the genre, as well as elevating it above its contemporaries.

The demo started with our character prebuilt, but the developers are already saying they’ll have a robust creator to lean on. One of the primary objectives the Keen team had was to make the game character class agnostic – something reflected in an absolutely massive skill tree. Sprinkling major and minor skills from the Warrior, Mage, and Ranger classes, we see our custom character begin to come to life. On the side of the panel we can also see a Constitution, Spirit, Endurance, Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence stat that can also impact things, though we didn’t see how quite yet. A quick look at our character panel also gave us our first look at arms and armaments. A bow, shield, backpack and extension, helm, chest, arms, legs, and boots are joined by some sort of hook and two rings. The developers want to be careful to never lock the player into a specific playstyle, so it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out through Early Access.

The next thing I noticed was that the world is gorgeous. The light mist that covers the ground conveys that this place is downright chilly. The stone and brickwork on buildings looks hyper realistic, which was even more impressive when the character pulled out a pick and absolutely obliterated the nearby wall. The game puts the world together with voxels without looking like it’s an 8 bit affair, and the result is a massively deformable world with options that aren’t immediately obvious. If you need into a castle, you can get on an overlook and utilize a wingsuit to glide in, you can tank up and assault the front door, or, if you are feeling adventurous, you can simply dig a tunnel underneath or directly through a wall.

While equipment is important, food and water are also important. Grilling up some wolf meat gave us 2 points of constitution which extended our health bar mightily. Fresh water gave us +1 to Endurance and +2 to Stamina Recharge. We also see on this panel that we are rested and that there are no threats nearby, but also that our Comfort Level is 0; we have no warmth, and we have nowhere to sit or shelter. We’ll want to solve those things at some point, but first it was time for a little combat as we headed into the Shroud.

Donning a crude shield that was little more than a chunk of wood with a handle, and equipping a basic club, we stepped into the murky gloom. As we did so, we saw a brand new UI element appear, revealing that we were “Enshrouded” (hence the name) and that time was against us. Staying in the Shroud for extended periods causes this meter to slowly fill, imperiling our character. Striking down a large mushroom-type creature and then consuming a nearby hourglass reset our Shroud timer – important if you plan on delving deeper. And delve we did.

Creeping into an enemy encampment using stealth via some bushes and keeping out of sight we slowly break into some sort of encampment. Descending into the dungeons below, we stumble upon some sort of bizarre vessel. Inside is, surprisingly, another survivor – a man named Oswald Anders. Anders is a blacksmith, and if we provide him with a proper place to live and work, he’ll join us at our encampment. But first, we’ll have to escape.

During our escape we stumble upon a journal from a man named Balthazar. In it we find that our would-be Blacksmith has an interesting past — he volunteered to be placed inside this “Cinder Vessel”. He is the first human to do so, and based on the loose language, he might have done so to leap through time to a point where he’d be needed once again.

Thankfully our egress was less eventful than our approach. Making our way back to our encampment, we get our first real look at the construction mechanics of Enshrouded. Voxel based, as I mentioned, it immediately resembles the likes of Valheim, albeit far more pretty. We already had a basic structure, but we’d need to build a forge for our new friend.

You can build each individual block, and in what looks to be half a dozen styles so far, but if you aren’t feeling particularly creative there are some shortcuts available to you. Prebuilt substructures, like a basic floor or a stone block with pylons, can be used to quickly craft a simple room. These can be rotated, snapped in place, or used more creatively with snapping disabled. What I found immediately interesting was that when you jammed two floors together mid-way, breaking the obvious 4×4 grid, the game didn’t care. In fact, it realistically meshed them together, adjusting the crenelation on the windows and the overall appearance. The end result looks like it was made that way on purpose, not simply smashed together, and I can’t wait to see how people use it. Placing walls with windows, we see it again. Two walls placed too close together made a very small slit instead of a larger window opening. Switching to the single block mode, the developer punched holes and the game adjusted, ringing the new hole with a proper structure. If you aren’t into making square things, you can get a lot more creative — this new engine is more than capable of keeping up, which we saw when other styles were used in conjunction with the basic stone building already in place.

All of this is well and good, but the world isn’t meant to be a parking lot. The same systems that are used to build can also be used to deform and shape the ground surface. Better still, the tools make building underground structures incredibly easy – something no other voxel-based builder has managed to accomplish. With just a few clicks we had a full workable underground space. The mind races at the possibilities.

Another aspect of running a village – something that is readily apparent as an objective of the Keen team is farming. Setting up the soil correctly and ensuring it’s plowed and tilled will yield crops. That’ll inevitably tie into the complexity of the cooking systems, but we’ll have to wait until Early Access to put our fingers in the dirt.

Headed back to our new forge we find our Blacksmith ready to work. After haranguing us for charging in with nothing more than a stick, he recommends we at least upgrade to a “Scrappy Sword”. We’ll need a handful of logs, metal scraps, and nails for him to do his work. Other options include a pickaxe, rake, felling axe, lockpick, spiked club, valiant shield, and armor called the “Rising Fighter Set”. Tabs across the top also reveal that he can enhance our equipment, along with a tab named “Manual crafting” that suggests there’s more here that we don’t know quite yet. We also see that we can construct additional “Production places” including a charcoal kiln to create additional coal-related items from wood. Placing the forge in the room, we see that our Blacksmith will craft metal sheets over two real-world minutes, needing charcoal (hence the kiln) and metal scraps.

Better armed, and now with a bow, we headed back into the Shroud. Delving even deeper we discover something that might be causing the blight in this area – something called a “Shroud Root”. The Shroud Root looks like a mushroom with Chthonic tentacles waving about, and is being guarded by a massive monster wielding a scythe with wicked intent. Clearly a boss, we see a new health bar appear, kicking off a fight that’ll need a bit of timing, blocking, and dodging to fell.

Dispatched, he drops a “Spine Splinter” — a legendary axe with solid cutting power. It’s also our first look at the itemization of Enshrouded. We can see that weapons have cutting, piercing, blunt, poison, fire, ice, shroud, and attack values, as well as a durability, stamina, and parry power. Underneath all of this are five additional locked attributes, enhancing additional cutting damage, cutting protection, piercing damage, and improved precision. Undoubtedly our Blacksmith friend will want a closer look at this. We also see the usual gray, green, purple, and gold progression for equipment, suggesting a Diablo-like itemization ahead.

The world of Enshrouded is already massive, and the underlying functions and gameplay mechanics look like they are already pretty well baked. I’m always on the lookout for games that let me express my creativity with my friends, and Enshrouded has me excited to do exactly that. While timing isn’t exact yet, the game is slated to head into Early Access soon. You can bet I’ll have a whole lot more to say when I can dig my hands in for myself. Stay tuned!