Is Enshrouded Procedurally Generated

While it's only been out for a little over a week, Enshrouded has already become one of the best-selling games of 2024. The survival game from Keen Games is still behind Palworld, but Enshrouded is dominating everything else to start the year. One of the things players love the most about Enshrouded, even in its early access period, is the massive map that players can explore. Because it's so large, many are wondering if Keen Games is using procedural generation to create the vast expanse. After all, we've seen other companies use the technology to build gigantic worlds with a relatively small team, so it wouldn't be too surprising to hear Enshrouded is also putting it to use.

Does Enshrouded Use Procedural Generation For Its Map?

Enshrouded has reached OVER ONE MILLION PLAYERS!!

In just four days, Enshrouded has attracted over a million players. We are completely blown away by its success and the overwhelmingly positive reception. From the bottom of our hearts, we want to thank all our players. pic.twitter.com/bIWgQ5Gn5e

— Keen Games ➡️ Enshrouded out NOW! (@KeenGamesStudio) January 29, 2024

Fortunately, we don't have to rely on player guesses because Keen Games has come out and given us a direct answer. Enshrouded's Steam discussion boards were filled with players asking about procedural generation, so Keen Games hopped in to provide the full answer. 

Keen Games said, "Because our game is a highly detailed voxel-based world, and has a strong emphasis on story and exploration, we decided that a pre-built world would be the better option for our game. This wasn't done out of laziness or because procedural generation would be too hard, but rather that procedural-generated worlds inherently come with a pretty strong lack of structure. They will always inherently be less detailed and coherent than a hand-built world, which would have made it pretty much impossible to actually achieve a level of storytelling and world-building that we wanted to do with our game."

From this, it's easy to see that Keen Games is taking the route of handcrafting to make sure that everything players come across will have at least one set of human eyes on it. The idea here is that if Enshrouded uses a hand-built world, the developers will more easily be able to tie everything together as they continue development. If each structure is built by human hands, then it's easier for the team to make sure it all makes sense with the story it wants to tell.

Obviously, fans seem to mostly love what Keen Games has built thus far. The sales numbers for Enshrouded don't lie, and those numbers will likely continue to climb. And it's not like the lack of procedural generation is going to make Enshrouded's map noticeably smaller. The team has already confirmed that it plans to introduce several new biomes as it expands Enshrouded during early access.

What's Next For Enshrouded?

In addition to working on new biomes, Keen Games has several big plans in store for Enshrouded. As they expand the map, they'll also add new enemies, crafting resources, and weapons. The team also wants to build on the current skill tree to give players even more options for giving their character a unique build. On top of that, Keen is committed to working with its community during the early access period to help decide what other features come to Enshrouded.

Enshrouded is available now on PC.