zorealis

Enshrouded is a town builder/open-world adventure. You (and up to 15 friends) wake up from metal pods wearing nothing but tattered pants. Once you make it outside, you'll find the ruins of towns and corpses galore across a massive hand-made map. Ultimately, it'll be your job to find survivors and build them a habitable village (or at least rooms with a bed and a ceiling). There will also be decaying ruins you can delve for gear, transmog, or new crafting recipes.

Story (some minor spoilers about NPC backgrounds)

From the opening cutscene you're told that the world fell apart because of a mysterious elixir. It would grant the imbiber great power, but also turned everyone against each other in a bid to horde as much elixir as possible. Eventually this led to cataclysmic wars and the conversion of large sections of the environment in Shroud, a nightmare biome full of zombies and tentacles. That's right, the world ended because of bottled late-stage capitalism.

Much of the story and lore of the world is relayed through notes that you can find scattered around the world as well as some clever environmental story-telling. While I've seen this approach in other games, I think it was done well and does a good job providing some "what the hell happened here" context, but does not go much deeper. Quite a few of these notes are written by people you can later recruit to your town. In those cases they sometimes give you a little backstory on some of the NPCs that have joined you such as a love letter from from your farmer to her queen. Overall, I found the story and worldbuilding much more coherent and developed than most games in this genre.

Design

There's not a lot of new mechanics to this game, but I think the main ones are well-designed. I found the building tools refreshingly intuitive to us and let me build anything I've wanted to without needing a 40-hour CAD drawing course. The exploration is also enjoyable. There are lots of ruined towns and cities to explore (or renovate) and the game encourages parkouring through the rooftops with the way the map is designed. There are also lots of little hidey-holes that often have something interesting squirreled away. One of the more interesting exploration mechanics is that you have limited time in the shroud or you die. This means that the areas outside the shroud are available when you want a more laidback gaming session, or you can drop into heavily foggy shroud areas for something more intense. Taken together building, exploring, and exploring the shroud allowed me to play at pace that was neither boring nor overwhelming.

On the subject of exploration, let's talk about the Shroud. Some areas of the map are a broken landscape choked in deep fog where lots of zombies and monstrosities roam. These areas are referred to as the Shroud and often contain resources that you'll need for crafting. You can also only survive in the Shroud for a set amount of time. While stats/consumables/skills can extend this time an extended trip into the Shroud always has me thinking about what is my plan for getting out. Add to this the poor visibility from the fog and it does a great job of providing a tense horror setting. At times it's easy to mistake a zombie for a pile of mushrooms, or to be unable to find a path out and resort to desperately digging a diagonal tunnel up through a cliff on the faint hope of getting above the Shroud before time runs out or your pickax breaks.

Combat is probably the weakest area of the game as of this writing, but I still find it just kind of average. It has an interesting skill tree that allows for a wide variety of builds but some of the skill placements probably need rethinking. Threat generation being an expensive skill late in the tank tree seems odd to me. In a solo game, at least, I felt I mainly ended up simply hacking through enemy hordes without really feeling the need for many of the high-cost skills. Some of the bosses do have some interesting mechanics, but they often felt like an awkward middle ground between Souls-like boss and MMORPG raid boss. I did need to pay some attention to boss mechanics, but most of the time its just watching for an attack to be telegraphed so you can run behind the boss and get a bunch of free backstab damage.

Lastly, one system that really doesn't add anything is gem slots. Weapons can spawn with a gem slot. Gems cannot be crafted and must be found as rare loot drops. The gems themselves are often highly specialized in what they do, so if one drops for a weapon that your build isn't focused on then it's better luck next time. Then once you finally have a gem you want, it's time to find a gem forge to socket/upgrade the gem. Forges are hidden all around the world and each forge is capped in how much it can increase a gem's power. Forges in later biomes or in more difficult to reach places have high caps. Oh, and you need a special currency that is both hidden around the world and specific to the biome you collected it in. If that sounds to you like there's no way any gems could be powerful enough to justify that amount work then you'd be correct.

Overall/Conclusions

Enshrouded is currently in early access. It's expected to be fully released sometime in 2026. In its current state, that seems both achievable and like it will be a fully developed game. Most of what is already in-game works well. I'd love to see gems re-worked, but even left untouched they aren't crucial to anything in the game. In it's current state, I would already recommend this game to anyone that likes builders or enjoys open-world exploration. It has absolutely hooked me in the best possible sense. It's $29.99 on Steam, but I got it 20% off for $23.99. I have been very satisfied for that price.

I finished watching the newest season of Kipo and here's what I thought. There was a lot I liked, but a few things I thoughts fell short.

( some thoughts )

I've had a lot of trouble concentrating enough to read lately, so I've taken to borrowing audiobooks from the library (it still amazes me that my phone has this ability).

( here's what I thought )

When I first tried to think about what was green, I thought of the nauseous emoji:


That quickly led to Bio from FF6. I never found the spell that useful but would sometimes cast it on my characters to make them purple. >.>

Thinking of status effects in FF6, I thought of how cute I find the imps to be. And how awesome they were equipped in full imp gear.

I thought about Kefka and his fancy green robes. I've seen so many call him a jester, but really he always looked like (and acted like) a guy that expects to be lavished with power and wealth. Someone that would rather look like a king and lust for domination, rather than take responsibility for leading.

Finally, green in FF6 makes me think of Terra and her amazing hair. I think that was the first time I wished I had more interesting hair colors than what I was born with. I could relate a lot with her backstory too. Ripped from the world she belong in, enslaved, and forced to do the bidding of a power-hungry emperor. Then I found out she could change into a glowing fur beast and I was enthralled.

And those are my green thoughts about FF6.

Orange always makes me think of the flames of a phoenix and the change that represents. I've had an idea for a short ficlet about change for awhile, so I appreciate the excuse to finally write it.

Orange You Ready for a Change (444 words) by zorealis
Fandom: Stardew Valley
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Clint/Emily
Additional Tags: Trans Character, Self-Discovery
Summary: Clint's first date couldn't have gone any better, but why doesn't feel that way?

I always loved pixel art as a kid. I used to try to make 8-bit sprites back when I was (and the dinosaurs were) young, but I was never very happy with the results. In the intervening millennia, I'm happy to say that I'm finally proud of this set of She-ra's Shield of Protection I made.