A long time ago the land of Embervale was a beautiful place, filled with busy towns and settlements scattered across its rich, intricate landscape. Those were good times for as long as they lasted, but then the shroud descended and the monsters took over, leaving behind a deadly mist in the lowlands and dangerous creatures everywhere. Embervale is empty now, with only a few people left sleeping in pods found in remote sections of the realm, and the towns lie in ruins. It’s a terrible place to be, which hasn’t stopped three million players from carving out a new homestead or two in Enshrouded’s hostile but somehow welcoming landscape.
Turns Out Lots Of People Are Good With a Fixer-Upper
Enshrouded is one of the biggest and most successful survival games out there, playing a little like a cross between Valheim and modern Zelda. You need to keep an eye on the thirst and hunger meters while running about, and building a functioning village to house Embervale’s few survivors lets you take advantage of their crafting skills, but when not caught up in homesteading there’s a full action-RPG to attack in whatever manner seems best. Beat on enemies with swords or heavy weapons, ping them with arrows, break out the magic, or figure out the best combination of the three to keep a little variety in the action. Fight head-on or play with the deformable terrain to cheese enemies to death, Enshrouded won’t judge. It’s great stuff, and the game’s breakout success since the January 24 Early Access release has guaranteed Enshrouded is getting the chance to grow into the game it wants to become.
Enshrouded Surpasses One Million Players in a Week, Promises More in the Pipeline
Enshrouded, the recently launched survival game, has reached a significant milestone by amassing over one million players within its first week.
Even as a success, three million players is the kind of number that anything but the most AAA-ish of AAA games would be proud to see, and making that number in roughly six and a half months is an impressive feat. The announcement of the three-million player number also came with a few other points of data, and some very simple math lets us know that-
90 million hours of in-game play = 30 hours per player on average
150 million player deaths = 50 deaths per player, although to be fair I’d say about half of the total are mine
700,000 players topped off the current level-cap of 25, or almost 43%!
And the best news in this age of gaming layoffs and studio closures, developer Keen Games has doubled its headcount. Slight disclaimer on that one- “since the work on Enshrouded began” rather than since January, but we’ll take the sparks of hope where we can find them.
The original plan was a year in Early Access, give or take, but success changes things andthe roadmapgrew to include features that had been filed under “wishful thinking”, so it’s hard to say how long it will be before Enshrouded moves into full release. Since it came out it’s had three large updates and plenty of bugfixes, and the 2024 roadmap still includes one new biome as well as animal farming and pets, weather, and other ongoing projects like performance improvements. Bigger changes on the horizon include more biomes, new dungeon types, and the biggest one of all that should completely change the map, water. It’s been a great run for Enshrouded so far, and with any luck three million players is just the beginning.
