Enshrouded - co-op survival action RPG - now available on Early Access

[Latelistener]

https://enshrouded.com/

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuViyK4qLQg

 

[Latelistener]

Your current year survivor craft. Demo was available until Oct. 22. I've played it for some time.

Positives:

- Hand-crafted world that reminds me a lot of Zelda and Gothic

- Destruction of terrain and buildings is probably on par with Teardown

- Compared to Valheim, a lot less grindy (but that can be changed) and with better combat

Mixed:

- There are a wingsuit and a grappling hook. Unfortunately, wingsuit cannot be used much for traversing like the paraglider from Zelda, but rather just to get down from somewhere without breaking your legs and grappling hook can only be used on specific points

- The main idea behind the game where some parts of the world are enshrouded in fog is not fleshed out enough imo. You go down, there is a timer and if your time runs out you die. That's it

- There is an extensive skill tree that looks like it was borrowed from Path of Exile. Unlike with modern gaming where your current year game designers prefer +1% to the size of your backpack as a meaningful upgrade, there are actually meaningful upgrades. Unfortunately, most of the stuff like "double jump" you've already seen 1000 times in other games

Negatives:

- Optimization is absolutely fucking terrible. 6 gigs of VRAM just to launch the demo and RTX 3070 cannot even handle 1080p on Ultra settings without FSR. They confirmed that the demo was not ready, but said that they needed coverage from Next Fest

 

[Bester]

I don't know if I'm paranoid, but I can recognize and pinpoint a lot of the mechanics in the demo to a UE4 marketplace asset. Destructible terrain = "voxel plugin", glider = "open world locomotion", craft = one of the many assets, hook, roll animations, attack animations, etc, all exist on the Marketplace and look just as unpolished.
This game could've been easily done by a couple of people. A first big asset flip. But a sign of more things like this to come.

 

[dbx]

Yeah, asset flip was my first impression too

 

[Latelistener]

I don't know if I'm paranoid, but I can recognize and pinpoint a lot of the mechanics in the demo to a UE4 marketplace asset.

They seem to be using their own in-house voxel-based engine from their previous game, so I'm not sure how many things could be taken from the marketplace and whether it's actually viable.

 

[Bester]

It's weird, but seems like you're right.

 

[Latelistener]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1203620/view/3787024475495811631

Enshrouded hits Early Access on January 24th
Finally a release date!

After many years of development, a celebrated demo and plenty of videos later, we are proud to confirm that Enshrouded has an official release date - albeit, a little later than the prophecy foretold. But you don’t want to read a blog post about the release date, you want to know the release date. It says so right there in the title: January 24th. 2024, by the way. We’ve also got a pretty cool new trailer that you can share with your friends if you like it. Check it out:

Considering that this was the most popular demo from Next Fest, there is very little chance it will be a flop.

However, there is alto very little chance they will fix the performance in such a short time.

 

[Late Bloomer]

 

[Sacibengala]

So, anyone playing this? How's the exploration part?

 

[Falksi]

Was pretty interested until I saw the crafting aspect. Fuck that shit.

Will maybe give it a go in a few years.

 

[Latelistener]

Optimization is still terrible as I thought it would be, so I'm going to pass for now.

 

[Bester]

So, anyone playing this? How's the exploration part?

It's okay. You got quests and little book notes with lore. I don't read them.

 

[Bester]

Optimization is still terrible as I thought it would be, so I'm going to pass for now.

It's flying at 144 Hz at 4k with a mere 2080. Optimizations are good.

 

[Artyoan]

I'm strongly considering this since it isn't too expensive. I like the art direction.

 

[Jinn]

Considering getting it to play with the bros at some point. It sounds like Valheim with NPCs, better combat, and better exploration. So basically just better Valheim, which is great, because I like Valheim, but found it lacking in a lot of ways.

 

[Tacgnol]

It is pretty good. It has much more progression than Valheim and a pretty well put together handcrafted world (no proc-gen).

Also, random comment, but it shares some sound effects with Gothic 1/2. I've heard the same death scream nameless makes several times from enemies.

 

[Jinn]

Also, random comment, but it shares some sound effects with Gothic 1/2. I've heard the same death scream nameless makes several times from enemies.

I was hoping there'd be a little Gothic influence in there since I knew it was a German game. This seems to confirm there's at least a bit floating around in there.

EDIT: And interesting steam forum post on that very subject.

People keep comparing this to Valheim.
Let me tell you something, it's more like Gothic and Risen than anything, plus building and terraforming of course, but the actual world exploration, secret and hidden places and loot, combat, etc. are very much like Gothic and Risen minus the fact that Gothic and Risen also have a lot of friendly NPCs and story/quests related to NPCs.

 

[Tacgnol]

Yeah, the exploration feels quite Gothic influenced. Gothic with a touch of dark souls anyway.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Yeah, the exploration feels quite Gothic influenced. Gothic with a touch of dark souls anyway.

Yeah, I got this yesterday, eventhough I hate early access-open world-crafting-survival types of cancer.
Survival part is just eating food and wearing some cloths, world and loot is hand placed and really reminds of Gothic and Risen, I just build minimal stuff to progress the story. Exploration is top notch thanks to breakable walls and ground. There is a good amount of secret buttons also. Reminds me a bit Divine Divinty also, secrets wise.
Combat is OK, at least it is not attack and roll spam fest. I can play as a sneaky bastard with backstabs, so I'm giving bonus points for just that. Game got some nice build variety it seems.

Also, random comment, but it shares some sound effects with Gothic 1/2. I've heard the same death scream nameless makes several times from enemies.

LoL, that drive me nuts when I was playing. I was about to install Gothic 2 just to test this (always look some reason to replay Gothic 2 )

 

[mediocrepoet]

It reminds me like a weird mashup of games.

Risen is a decent starting point for comparison as others have noted, though the combat is simpler.
Then it has destructible terrain that reminds me of Red Faction Guerilla.
Then base building and crafting type stuff like any of those survival games like Conan Exiles.

There is food and water, but it's basically restorative and/or stat boosting like in an RPG and not strictly required for survival like in a survival game. The biggest survival mechanic is the mist that has a meter for how long you can persist in it, adding some time pressure on forward exploration.

Your character is functionally immortal due to lore reasons. You can die, but you'll respawn. Currently, there's no falling damage. No idea if that will be implemented in the future or not - you're basically a construct, so it wouldn't be the weirdest thing if they didn't have falling damage.

Opening story vignette is straight Demon's Souls.

All in all, I like it. Definitely shows promise for EA. I'd heard that the devs are saying it's basically feature complete and they're mostly (only?) adding content now, so basically only like 60% of the game's length is ready or something like that. Was a Youtuber saying these things, so don't treat that as gospel.

 

[Tacgnol]

All in all, I like it. Definitely shows promise for EA. I'd heard that the devs are saying it's basically feature complete and they're mostly (only?) adding content now, so basically only like 60% of the game's length is ready or something like that. Was a Youtuber saying these things, so don't treat that as gospel.

Devs actually have a suggestion page where people can upvote feature requests. They said they will prioritise the most voted requests.

https://enshrouded.featureupvote.com

Current top one is to improve the way quest progression works in MP. Currently it's tied to the server so you can miss out on things if you join a server that is further along on quests than your personal game.

 

[mediocrepoet]

All in all, I like it. Definitely shows promise for EA. I'd heard that the devs are saying it's basically feature complete and they're mostly (only?) adding content now, so basically only like 60% of the game's length is ready or something like that. Was a Youtuber saying these things, so don't treat that as gospel.

Devs actually have a suggestion page where people can upvote feature requests. They said they will prioritise the most voted requests.

https://enshrouded.featureupvote.com

Current top one is to improve the way quest progression works in MP. Currently it's tied to the server so you can miss out on things if you join a server that is further along on quests than your personal game.

Yeah I don't play multiplayer but your world saves independently of your characters so if you wanted to start over, it's actually more important that you delete your world or start a new one than messing with your character, unlike basically any other game.

That and ability to pause in single player are the only ones I thought were worthwhile on there ATM. I think they intend to add more biomes as it is anyway, so whatever.

 

[Tyranicon]

Why is this in general gaming? It identifies as a RPG:

 

[Latelistener]

Optimization is still terrible as I thought it would be, so I'm going to pass for now.
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It's flying at 144 Hz at 4k with a mere 2080. Optimizations are good.

What is "flying"? How much fps? And why do you specify your refresh rate?

I have 3070 Ti and it's 40-55fps (almost never 60) in 4K with DLSS set in Performance mode with tweaked settings (not lowest, but not best either).

Graphics in the game aren't that impressive for such GPU requirements.

Spoiler

It's better than what it was in the demo, but not by much.

 

[Arryosha]

I'm a few hours in, having just gotten the first companion, and the combat encounters so far have been zero challenge--like, I'm taking no damage. Does the combat challenge ramp up down the road?