I got bored of Sengoku Dynasty relatively quickly. I liked the first 20 or so hours of the game, but when the task turned towards building multiple villages in different regions, while I was gathering and crafting less and less, my interest waned. So I looked at the tags that Steam described Sengoky Dynasty with: Open world, survival, crafting, base building, and looked what other games are out there that might be better suited to my personal preferences.

Now there are dozens of this kind of games, but a closer look revealed what the tags didn't tell: That there are a number of games which combine crafting and base building with some sort of automation, and there are other games which have no automation, and it is you who has to do all the gathering and crafting. To keep them apart, one has to look for clues: Games that have villagers, or other creatures living with you (e.g. Palworld), or factories (e.g. Satisfactory) are more likely to be of the automation kind of base building crafting games. Games in which you are all alone, or where the only other people in your base are other players in multiplayer games, are usually of the non-automation variety. Right now, I am looking for the latter.

So I was looking at the huge number of games that have come out over the last years, and looked at other criteria: Which games were hyped at release and then forgotten, abandoned by both players and developers? Which games kept their players and received continued development? By looking at that, one game stood out: Enshrouded, which was released two years ago, has received various patches, updates, and content additions, and has kept a good number of players over the years. While still technically in early access, the full release is planned for 2026, and the last mayor content update in October 2025 was well received.

Looking at the gameplay, Enshrouded has no automation. Instead it has a much bigger exploration and roleplaying part than Sengoku Dynasty has. It has real-time combat, which I don't love, but has very detailed difficulty settings, where you can set the monsters to hit harder or less hard, so I should be able to find a difficulty that isn't too frustrating for me. The game is only $30, and I checked that it isn't available on Game Pass. So I bought Enshrouded and am currently installing it. Hopefully, this is the open world, survival, crafting, base building game I have been looking for.

- posted by Tobold @ 2:41 PM Permanent Link