It's starting to smell kinda fishy in here

[captainamaziiing]

I'll start by saying this game looks really promising. If it lives up to its own hype, it's the game I've been waiting for for years.

But I am starting to wonder about the management behind the programmers. The first red flag for me was that it was by KEEN. I skipped the demo because it was by KEEN and I had enough of KEEN's nonsense with Medieval Engineers.

It was later pointed out that KEEN Games is not KEEN Software House. This is why we trademark company names and there is only one FORD car company.

I wrote to KEEN Games to ask if they were related to KEEN Software House. I got a swift reply, which I appreciated. Good customer service. They assured me that they were not related in any way and had only recently even become aware of KEEN Software House.

I looked up both companies, and KEEN Games had the name first. So I suggested they had a trademark debacle on their hands, that I was not the only person negatively associating the two companies, and they should lawyer up.

Here's the thing. I don't really believe the two are completely unrelated. I just Googled them both. They are one country and a 5.5 hour drive apart. Also, Keen is not a word in either of their languages. The odds that two companies, tucked into that corner of the world, would both choose a capitalized KEEN are Powerball odds.

I'm going to wait a bit on this title, as hyped as I am. Between the trademark debacle indicating either remarkable incompetence and/ or outright deceit, and now this pricing thing...something smells fishy. If the reviews all come in shining I'll take a better look, but I'm done wondering what the price is, they lost me for now.

[King Cluck]

The demo was amazing brah, you should probably take your tinfoil hate off or lay off the drugs.

[Arasine]

The demo had a tiny amount of content, with a visual glitch which showed us that the vast majority of the map was not even made yet. Coupled with a flat refusal to give the buying public a price, id say that its common sense to be sceptical at this point.
So many religious minded people defending something they have never seen...

[PAIN]

Originally posted by Arasine:

The demo had a tiny amount of content, with a visual glitch which showed us that the vast majority of the map was not even made yet. Coupled with a flat refusal to give the buying public a price, id say that its common sense to be sceptical at this point.
So many religious minded people defending something they have never seen...

I didn't play the demo but I was looking forward to this with some watched videos about it. So not much content? And no price?

[Ellis_Cake]

Originally posted by Arasine:

The demo had a tiny amount of content, with a visual glitch which showed us that the vast majority of the map was not even made yet. Coupled with a flat refusal to give the buying public a price, id say that its common sense to be sceptical at this point.
So many religious minded people defending something they have never seen...

Thats not true at all. the closed beta had a much larger world,
and people was skipping out to it during the demo too.

EA will be about 24km^2 in scale, demo had 1km^2 with the rest outside of its boundaries.
Full game aims at 40ish km^2

[Xyeth]

Originally posted by Ellis_Cake:

EA will be about 24km^2 in scale, demo had 1km^2 with the rest outside of its boundaries.
Full game aims at 40ish km^2

At full release, that will be about 3 km larger than Skyrim.

[Nerevar]

Originally posted by Ellis_Cake:

Originally posted by Arasine:

The demo had a tiny amount of content, with a visual glitch which showed us that the vast majority of the map was not even made yet. Coupled with a flat refusal to give the buying public a price, id say that its common sense to be sceptical at this point.
So many religious minded people defending something they have never seen...

Thats not true at all. the closed beta had a much larger world,
and people was skipping out to it during the demo too.

EA will be about 24km^2 in scale, demo had 1km^2 with the rest outside of its boundaries.
Full game aims at 40ish km^2

for those wondering :

they said this before and this would be about 20% larger than valheims worldmap in total.

[Nebiru]

Valheim's map is about 314km², so it is not even close!

"Is the world of Enshrouded fully handcrafted, or are there any procedural elements?

We had this takeaway from Portal Knights where the procedural world didn't really feel like a place, so we decided to go for a handcrafted world. Right now, the world is about 25 square kilometres in size. We have four different biomes and the fog is its own thing below.

There's more to come. The full game world is 64 square kilometres, so after early access, we will fill more space. But I think the space we have filled so far should last for a long playtime already. The world is also fixed because we want players to be able to talk about places and discoveries."

https://wccftech.com/enshrouded-qa-keen-games-explains-all-about-its-zelda-meets-valheim-game/

[Praemus]

Originally posted by Oldskool:

The demo was amazing brah, you should probably take your tinfoil hate off or lay off the drugs.

These bootlicker-esque insults are really just proving the point that a small, but vocal minority trolls to the defense (here and on their Discord), of a project that's showing noticeable signs of something being wrong.

And it's a huge turn-off.

Why buy yet another game, with a toxic community?

[Oussebon]

KEEN Software House is based in Prague (Czech Republic). The Enshrouded devs Keen Games are based in Germany. Keen Games has previously done Portal Knights, and also has got at least €2m from the German Government towards Enshrouded.

Of course, any game can suck and/or be an overambitious flop, but I'm not getting scam vibes here.

My main concern from Enshrouded's demo was the PC performance. On the one hand, it was pre early access, but on the other hand it was clear a lot of optimisation would need to be done in only a very short window before early access release. I'm not a developer, and in any event they're using their own engine iirc, so for all I know they just needed to tweak how the game does the fog and a few days' work would double performance.... But if there were preorders for this, I wouldn't be preordering.

We shall find out soon I suppose. :) I'll be looking forward to reviews and wishing them a good early access launch.

[Tonester]

Dude - are you okay? Need an intervention? Boot-lickers? This will be my 3rd full game I've played of their's (KEEN Games)... and 4th or 5th if you count their Portal Knights DLC.

They are an extremely small, friendly, and responsive dev team. I've never even heard of Keen Software House... and neither has anyone else in the world until you posted this. By the looks of it, KSH have 1 main game/engine under their belt and then multiple attempts at reskinning it.

[Sugam]

There is some odd stuff and concerns with this title so i'm skipping it. The more I learn about the company and this game the more flaky it all seems. Not to mention how rabid the fan base seems to be, rather not for a co-op or online kinda game.

[Nav]

Keen made Portal Knights, which was actually a charming title once I warmed up to it. Had a good few dozen hours in it, and they continued to support it for some time through early access and post release DLC. This game seems like a natural evolution of it, so I've got good faith in this.

[Mazdahoy]

For me what's smelly here is the fact they addopted EULA and wont provide mod supporters...
The evidences suggest the next step is to put DRM and third party spyware inside the game.
Lets keep an eye open.

[Krucifix]

I just hope this doesn't end up like so many other Early Access games, such as;

In Early Access for YEARS (Ark, Rust)
Charging AAA game prices while in Early Access (Ark)
Making DLC content, and charging for it, instead of working on fixing the game and finishing it. (Ark, Rust, Dying Light, Space Engineers)

[Flynn.dll]

Yawn...