Admiralty Gaming looks back at the sandbox RPG Kenshi:

Kenshi Review 2022 - Sandbox RPG

SplatterCatGaming checked out the sandbox RPG Kenshi:

Kenshi - The Fantastic Open World Survival Sandbox RPG

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TheGG reports that Kenshi has sold over 1 million units worldwide.

Bristol, UK – 30 September 2020 – “Kenshi“, a single player RPG set in a vast and atmospheric ‘Sword-Punk’ style open world, has hit the milestone of 1 million global sales this summer.

Developed over 12 years, with 5 of those years under Steam Greenlight’s Early Access program, Kenshi released in December 2018 and remained among the top 100 most played games throughout 2019 with many players clocking over 1,000 hours of playtime.

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The post-launch recap for Kenshi confirms that Kenshi 2 is in development.

Current Plans

With the launch of Kenshi out of the way the studio now has three main focal points:

• Bug Fixing: There's still a few quirks we're working out in Kenshi, as of writing the current public release is v1.0.27, updates are set to continue as we're keeping a keen eye on user feedback to solve any remaining issues as quickly as possible. If you encounter any issues please let us know, ideally through the forums.
• Localisation: Kenshi has a surprisingly wide appeal with users telling us their stories from across the globe. We're working with the game's fans and external partners to give everyone the best experience we can by translating Kenshi into different languages where it makes sense to do so. Trust us in that we're monitoring where our users are and localising accordingly, currently we're focused on finishing up the Japanese translation and providing Chinese language support.
• Kenshi 2: We're not willing to share too many details of the project just yet, but laying the groundwork for Kenshi 2 allows us to work on much needed engine upgrades which we plan to include in Kenshi for free as soon as they're ready. This should provide a large boost to performance in addition to several other perks we'll talk about later down the road.

Thanks Farflame!

Forgottenlor has penned down his thoughts about Kenshi, after spending quite some time with this sandbox game.

My character was an insect drone. For some reason he was expelled from the hive into the harsh world of Kenshi. There he started his new life in a borderland town run by the trade ninjas. But he came with a plan. After all, his people were diligent workers. First, he started mining ore, then he began to weave clothing. With his profits he hired bodyguards so he could transport his goods to the nearby city of Stack. He became an armorer, then assembled a team of warriors to help him travel the world he once feared. He found abandoned factories, ninja towers, ruined libraries, fearsome beak creatures, fire storms, slavers, dangerous robots, and terrible outlaws. Kenshi is a sandbox rpg in an extremely unusual setting. It gives you many paths to success, but no set one. There is no main quest. No real story. Kenshi is a game for players who can get into its world and define their own goals.

Kenshi 2 is currently in development a forum post reveals.

Future Plans...

Now, our original plan was to keep the new project quiet so we could work on it without public pressure and then do a big press release when we had something to show. However it seems lots of people are getting confused or angry about us not still tinkering with Kenshi or leaving the world of Kenshi behind, so I'm going to go ahead and announce early what we are working on now, as I think it will put most people at ease.

We are starting work now on Kenshi 2!

• It will be set 1000 years in the past, during the time of the "Old Empire" and reveal more of the world's lore and history.
• It will be based on the same code-base and engine.
• The engine will be upgraded to the latest version of Ogre, which should drastically improve performance.
• Why keep the same engine? Because a completely new engine would break everything and take another million years to finish. By sticking with the same code we are making the descision to prioritise gameplay instead of graphics. (Not to mention a much faster release date)
• The work we do on the engine upgrade will also be applied to Kenshi 1 as a free update.
• Other core improvements or small features achieved in Kenshi 2 could also potentially be applied to Kenshi 1 as free updates.

SsethTzeentach checked out Kenshi:

KENSHI Review | SSS Rank: Smuggling™ | Starvation™ | Slavery™

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Kenshi has been reviewed by NeverKnowsBest.

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A review of the open-ended sandbox survival game Kenshi. Getting beaten by starving mobs, sold into slavery and eaten by cannibals is a good thing! (and here's why).

PC Gamer has reviewed the sandbox RPG Kenshi:

Kenshi review

In my time with Kenshi, I've crossed swamps so vast that I haven't dared return. I've been beaten shitless by a pack of goats that were intended to feed my rabble of listless nomads. I've been a shopkeeper and a thief, a lone wanderer and a slave, and I've been an entire community of people working together to—one day—erect our own city in the wasteland. One day.

None of these events were part of questlines. There’s no such regimentation in Kenshi, no tangible sense of scripted behaviour, just a ragged web of vicious systems so myriad that they sometimes tangle and fumble and descend into absurdity. But there is a cold order to Kenshi too, a formidable degree of depth that’s as impressive as it is stubborn.

[...]

The early going can be cruel; basic survival plans can be easily derailed by a city guard who plants drugs on you then demands money you don’t have, or by finding yourself deep in a region inhabited by vicious alien giraffes. It can all get a bit grindy too; it takes a long time before you can handle yourself in a fight, a long time to grow food, and a long time to get around. Even though Kenshi is capable of conjuring great scenarios to break up these anaemic stretches, it doesn’t lessen the slog.

But after around 30 hours, I still feel like I’ve so much to uncover. I've still got to expand from a dustbowl community to a fortress; to send an expedition of battle-hardened warriors out into distant wilds while back at the township artisans and workers rake in profits thanks to the clockwork-like regimen I created. Kenshi is huge, amoral, and opaque enough that I'll be deciphering it it for a very long time.

Score: 84/100 - Work through the presentational ugliness and technical awkwardness, and you’ll find an experience of frightening depth.

Thanks henriquejr!

Gilded Reviews tells us five reasons to pick up Kenshi:

5 Reasons to Pick Up Kenshi (December 2018)

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Rock Paper Shotgun checked out the sandbox RPG Kenshi:

Wot I Think: Kenshi

Everything and nothing

I could, I suspect, dash myself against Kenshi‘s wind-bleached rocks for a full year and still feel ill-qualified to pass judgement upon it. You might as well ask me to review atmospheric pressure, or continental drift.

Kenshi is everything. Kenshi is nothing. Kenshi just is.

Before I proceed any further into existential hand-wringing about the amorphous nature of sandbox survival/management/roleplaying maxi-game Kenshi, which just left early access after a half-decade of open development, let me make something clear. Kenshi impresses the bejeesus out of me. Given the opportunity, I’m confident I would play it for a year – more, even.

[...]

Thanks henriquejr!

Finally the sandbox RPG Kenshi has been released

Kenshi version 1.0 is now out!

After 12 years of working alone, working as a six man team, shrinking back to a four man team, and suffering the dreaded year-long pathfinding update disaster of ‘15... we kept going til the end and we finally hit version 1.0.

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We want to thank all of our players who have spread the word, supported us along the way and never given up on us during our long development. And of course we want to give a special thank you to all of our moderators (Shidan, Hatsune and Lumi) and contributors (Gauthier, Vlad, Yuri, Yayoi, YangFu, Egoisto.j.k, Tanishi, Urakata and many more!) who have given us their time and help to make Kenshi as good as it can be.

We will still be supporting Kenshi so if you do come across any technical issues we may have missed, just make a report in the bug forums and we’ll look into it asap.

Happy explorations :)

Kenshi has been on Steam Early Access for a long time but that is set to change. Version 1.0 will arrive December 6th 2018.

Final Map Out Now On Stable, Plus... 1.0 Coming Soon!

16 November - Koomatzu

Final Release...

Lo-Fi Games is pleased to announce, after a long total of 12 years in development from the moment Chris first created it… Kenshi will reach full release 1.0 on December 6th 2018!

We want to thanks all of our fans from all around the world for their help in supporting us over the years, being patient with us, helping to refine Kenshi with feedback, bug reports, suggestions, and simply enjoying playing Kenshi and boosting us to create something huge.

The finish line is close, now is the last chance to make your voice heard to really help us make Kenshi the best we possibly can. We aren’t taking feature requests anymore and we won’t be adding in any more gameplay features but we’ll be focusing on fixing the last of the bugs and irregularities. Reporting any odd gameplay issues, bugs or imbalances will be massively valuable to us in these next few weeks. No matter how small you think an issue is, or whether you think it’s already been reported, send it in to us anyway!

And don’t worry, even after the 1.0 release we will continue to support the game and work on any fixes we might have missed.

You can share your feedback with us via the Steam forums or our official forums[www.lofigames.com].

*Please note that the price will be increasing from £12.99 to £22.99 at version 1.0.

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Kenshi dialog writer Natalie Mikkelson explains how to build a sandbox gameworld:

Worldbuilding With NPC Dialogue: A Beginner's Guide

Three years ago, I became Lo-Fi Games’ dialogue writer for our huge 355 square mile open world RPG, Kenshi. Being a sandbox, there exists no linear narrative to tell Kenshi’s story, which poses a problem: how do you breathe life into a world that has no preset path to take the player’s hand through it? Without narration or cutscene visuals, we’re left with little context for the world and it’s dialogue. Contextless writing in videogames is a subject I’ve found rarely discussed, but fortunately I learned a few things along the way of Kenshi’s development from good old research and simple trial and error... and this guide is the result. So, whether you’re writing for a sandbox or any other role playing game in need of dialogue, I hope this guide helps add energy and meaning to your setting.
[...]

Selectbutton has reviewed the Early Access RPG Kenshi, which is in development for several years now:

Kenshi Early Access Review

Kenshi is a game. That I'm sure about. Kenshi is a lot of things within a game. This is something else I'm sure about.

Kenshi feels like the amalgamated material of Mount & Blade, The Elder Scrolls, and several survival games all thrown in for good measure. This brutal game is a challenge from the start, either from possible starvation, bandit attacks, or sheer bad luck. While there are tooltips and some helpful guides along the way (it's always worth asking around), the game drops you in and sets you loose without much else.

Before being dropped into the world though, there are things to attend to. These include what kind of scenario you're playing, character customization, and advanced option tweaking (highly recommended) that can give you a slight edge in your early games. The scenarios change the overall framework of the game, subtly influencing your gameplay to be more RPG-like or more crafting/trading oriented. One even puts an interesting spin on a more RTS-like experience within the confines of this game. The customization is also a nice treat as it offers a large variety of options such as everything from character race to individual traits. On your group experiences, you're able to fully customize every member of your group. They still come out looking like poor and haggard bums when you first hit the dusty world, but the sheer variety is impressive.

[...]

Simply Put

Kenshi is a lot of ideas thrown together. A lot. I'm interested to see what a final version might look like. While Chris Hunt, founder of Lo-Fi Games developed the game himself over the course of six years, the team grew upon the game's success on Steam Greenlight. With that said, even I found there may just be too much going on at once. Kenshi has quite a steep learning curve, but I know there are many willing to enjoy the kind of freedom featured in the game.

I'm still finding out new things here and there as I play and considering the large size of the map, I'm positive I'll continue to do so. My only concern is the noted steep learning curve: it was a bit of a turn off when I initially started the game. I was appreciative of the tool tips and small guidance points the game provided, but there's so much out there even then. Some will also find this to be an issue when starting the game up, but for those looking to play something a little like Mount & Blade set in a fantasy type world with an incredible challenge, Kenshi might be a great fit.

Couch spotted this big update for sandbox open world RPG Kenshi:

Beta Update 0.90 (and Hotfix) Released

NEW WORLD (0.90.0)
Due to the sheer size of the new map the first release will be restricted to a certain area only. This area will gradually expand with more updates, but the main focus now is going to be on stability and polish.

This first build will be full of bugs and instability, please send us crashdumps and bug reports so we can fix it up ASAP.

The update is only available on the "Experimental" branch at the moment, because I'm unsure of it's stability. (you have to right-click on Kenshi in your Steam games list -> properties -> betas tab -> then choose "experimental")

Content:

• Entirely new world map. More detailed and polished, new factions, new content, things to explore. Its' like Kenshi 2. Crazy. I should have called it Kenshi 2 and charged for it again, but I didn't. Damn.
•  Entirely revamped research tech-tree, new technologies and balance. Research is faster, but has a cost in items or artifacts.
• Totally new buildings. Multiple floors, and you can mount turrets on the rooftops.
• New power system. Generators require fuel, wind power fluctuates with the wind strength, batteries compensate for fluctuations. Fuel can be made from crops.
• Revamped farming system and different crops.
• New animals, and new races with own strengths and weaknesses.
• There's water now. Rivers to cross and oceans to drown in.
• Camping - You can build easy camp beds and fires for survival when travelling.
• Things and places to find. Bandit bases, old labs, ruins.

Gameplay:

• Hunger is now a thing. You can die of starvation although it takes a long time. Your characters appearance reflects their state of physical strength or malnutrition.
•  Buildings are now made with multiple materials. Machinery requires iron and sometimes copper.
• Thievery is improved, buildings have things to steal, guards are more alert.
• Leather crafting now requires you to hunt for animal skins
  Nice new zoomable world map window. It's so nice.
• Your stats are now affected by injuries and malnutrition.
• Certain animals might now eat your crops, your dead bodies, and sometimes even your unconscious bodies.
• NPCs use the stuff in their homes, guards train, people sit etc
  Guards in buildings and shops now descreetly sort of follow you about, keeping an eye on you.
•  Fixed getting busted for stealing from accidental clicks. You can look inside unlocked containers, and lock picking has to be chosen through the right-click menu.
• Reduced labour/engineering speed penalty at level 1 from 0.25x to 0.5x. This will speed things up slightly at the lower levels when starting out
  Stealth skill is easier to train in non-hostile environments.
• Increased trade profitability by 50%, this combined with thievery should provide decent alternatives to looting as a profession in the early game stage.
• Characters with a turret job will automatically use whichever turret has enemies in its line of fire.
• New long-distance move command, so you can click on distant terrain and your characters will run there
  Tons of bugfixes.

Engine:

• New fancy shadow system, looks nicer and more importantly runs faster.
• New terrain engine. Runs faster, looks nicer and shows more detail for distant mountains.
• Long-range pathfinding system. You can click on any visible distant. mountain and your characters will find their way there, following roads.
• A lot of fundamental engine optimisations have been done, this may temporarily cause new bugs, but hopefully speed things up.
• Bit of an overhaul to the animation system, runs faster and combat animation should be a little smoother and have more functionality.
• Overhauled with a new PBR & HDR global lighting system, should make a great improvement to the visual quality.
• (Credit for this goes to Linda MacGill and Igor Frolov of Bug Zen!)

CURRENT STATUS:

• Currently only runs in DirectX11 mode, DirectX9 mode will be fixed later.
•  No more 32-bit support, the game's memory requirements are too high.
• Not sure how it runs/looks on ATI and non-nVidia graphics cards.

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After long years of development, Kenshi is finally approaching beta.

You may have noticed we have been very quiet over the last few months without releasing any updates.  The reason is we are on our final run to the beta release with the new world map!

This means all core features and content will be in the game and we can finally focus entirely on stability, bug-fixing and polish.  (Features and content may still be added in the future, but not until after a full stable 1.0 release)

I won't give an exact date for the beta release because it will depend on how smoothly things go, but it will be in a few weeks from now, probably early February.  Here are the details:

NEW WORLD (0.80.0)
Due to the sheer size of the new map the first release will be restricted to a certain area only.  This area will gradually expand with more updates, but the main focus now is going to be on stability and polish.

Content:

• Entirely new world map.  More detailed and polished, new factions, new content, things to explore.  Its' like Kenshi 2.  Crazy.  I should have called it Kenshi 2 and charged for it again, but I didn't.  Damn.
• Entirely revamped research tech-tree, new technologies and balance.
• Totally new buildings.  Multiple floors, and you can mount turrets on the rooftops.
• New power system.  Generators require fuel, wind power fluctuates with the wind strength, batteries compensate for fluctuations.
• Revamped farming system and different crops.
• New animals, and new races with own strengths and weaknesses.
• There's water now.  Rivers to cross and oceans to drown in.
• Camping- You can build easy camp beds and fires for survival when travelling

Bandit camps, somewhere for them to retreat to and stage assaults.

Chris Priestman (Siliconera) talks with developer Chris Hunt about the eight year development journey of the sandbox sqad-based RPG Kenshi:

Kenshi’s Eight Year Development Journey From One-Man RPG To A Team’s Success

Kenshi has been in development for a long time. Eight years, in fact. And it’s no wonder: the majority of it is the work of just one person, Chris Hunt, and the game is scheduled to be absolutely huge. So what is Kenshi? It’s a harsh, open ended RPG that relies on detailed sandbox play rather than a linear structure.

Your primary goal in Kenshi is to survive. And it’s not made easy as the other characters in the game will not be intimidated by you as you’re not a fated hero. You’re just a regular nobody trying to get along with your life. And so it’s possible that bandits will kill you in a village raid, that you’ll be mugged, or you may even be turned into a slave at any point if you let an attacker get the better of you. 

For the past couple of years, Kenshi has been gaining popularity on Steam Early Access, and due to that the progress it’s been making has accelerated as more money means more time and people can be thrown at it. Siliconera caught up with the game’s lead Chris Hunt to talk about how he got started working on Kenshi, why he undertook such an ambitious project by himself, and where the game is now heading with its latest updates.

To start with, could you give a brief history on the development of Kenshi – how it got started, how long it’s been in the making, and who’s working on it?

I started work on Kenshi around eight years ago now. For the first five or six years, I worked alone on it full time whilst juggling a minimum wage security guard job during the nights to get by. It’s been in the works for a long time, mainly laying in the fundamental systems and getting it into a playable state. But it’s finally picking up pace now that it’s on Steam Early Access and I can afford extra manpower. During the last two years I’ve managed to grow a small team – Sam, our first programmer; Oli, our world designer; Natalie, our PR contact & writer; Otto, our 3D & concept designer; and Maykol, our second programmer.

What would you say is the concept at the center of Kenshi? What kind of experience does it offer at its core that you won’t find in other games?

It’s a mixture of genres: an open world RPG, kind of like Skyrim (very very loosely speaking), but with RTS elements of squad control, base building, research and crafting.

I’ve never liked the hand-holding that most of the big RPGs give the player where you’ll start off a hero, strong from the very beginning, nothing to fear. In Kenshi you start out as a normal runt with no special powers, no higher stats. You are not special, you are nothing, and even survival itself is a struggle. You’ll be bullied, harassed, caught up in the war of another faction… maybe you’ll even get caught up in a bandit raid while resting in the ‘safety’ of a town.

[...]

Lo-Fi Games has a new update for Kenshi on Steam about Frontier Prison & Lights.

Just a short progress report to let you know what we've been up to this week: Oli has been designing a black frontier prison based on the citadel outpost from last week

Programming-wise, Maykol is still at work on integrating the re-designed GUI; hopefully it will be ready for the last final touches next week. Chris and Sam have both finished slavery mechanics and the DirectX11 upgrade, now back on fixing up the path-finding system and other general bugs which have emerged after adding the new content. We've also finally added the very first torch lights into the game!

Lo-Fi Games has released a few more updates for Kenshi since my last post. The latest post talks about a new game update that adds slavers to the game.

Hi everyone! It looks like we're going to be quiet again for a couple of weeks so just thought I'd fill you in on what's to come. We're hoping to have our next update ready for early April.

0.73.0 will include:

• Slavery
  There will be a slave camp where players are shackled, shaved, stripped and forced to work in mines. The capture AI will be rather limited at first, but in later updates there will be slave raids and potentially slave markets.
• New GUI and character editor
  New morphs and improved editing in the character editor. You can check out a latest GUI screen here http://lofigames.com/gui-makeover/
• New character models
  The character editor and character models are primarily aimed to help boost performance, as opposed to simple aesthetic improvement. New character face designs have been created with less bone structure for better optimisation.
• Performance boost
  Slight improvement in frame rate but still needs further optimisation in future updates. Also fixed the bug where guards won't protect you from bandits

*We may include the 'bone people' as a new playable race, but still contemplating saving it for beta release when the new world map is finished*

Lo-Fi Games posted new updates for Kenshi this month. So here is a recap for members who have no clue what the game is as it's been in Early development for years.

A free-roaming squad based RPG. Focusing on open-ended sandbox gameplay features rather than a linear story. Be a trader, a thief, a rebel, a mercenary, a business owner, a doctor, a bandit... the list goes on. Research new equipment and craft new gear. Purchase and upgrade your own buildings to use as safe fortified havens when things go bad, or use them to start up a business. Aid or oppose the various factions in the world while striving for the strength and wealth necessary to simply survive in the harsh desert. Train your men up from puny victims to master warriors. Carry your wounded squad mates to safety and get them all home alive.

The first update is about the progress with a few random crashes.

At this point most of the random crashes have been fixed, except for the
main, most frequent one that is the main source of the instability in
the 0.70.x updates. (This is the crash that usually occurs randomly as a
result of moving around the map or loading new towns).

The second update is about the games  female character models.

A couple of weeks back, Otto showed off some of the new female character models that he’s been working on.In the next couple of weeks, we hope to have a few extra humanoid models ready to show you all.

It has been a while since I posted anything about Kenshi so here is a new update for the game. Up first the games developer posted a Progress update on Steam.

So here’s the progress we’ve made this month (with percentages and charts n stuff, due to popular demand ;) :

The second updats is about a new Redit AMA that started today. It might be the next day where you live though, So the answers will still be visible.

Leviathyn has posted a new preview of Kenshi, and they included a new Q&A with the games Creator & Lead Developer Chris Hunt.

Where did idea for the game came from and telling us how long it’s been in development? Where there any particular inspirations for this sort of sandbox gameplay?

I’ve been working on Kenshi for around 7 years now, juggling it with part-time employment as a security guard to get by. It wasn’t until last year when Kenshi was accepted on Steam Greenlight that I was able to hire a team of developers. I started working on Kenshi because I got irritated with so-called open-ended games and wanted to make an awesome RPG that I would want to play myself. Players get mollycoddled too much, with super strong hero charters and guided missions that force you to take certain routes and directions. I want to explore places when I feel like, do what I want when I feel like it. Kenshi has no super strong characters, you’re not special, just a puny normal person who needs to work hard to improve like everyone else.

When I played the game’s alpha, I found myself really digging the game’s visual look? Where there any particular inspirations for this?

The current look of the game has a kind of desert sword-punk style to it, most inspired by the Fallout series and Mad Max movies. I’ve always appreciated that open, lonely and harsh environment in games and movies. Saying that though, there will a lot more different terrains coming up in later updates, mostly arid, different deserts and canyons, but also swamplands and others.

Speaking of which, how has the feedback been now that the game is in Early Access on Steam?

It’s been pretty good, people seem excited about it’s potential. The city building aspect I think is most attractive to people – just being able to wander the desert, set up a base and fight off bandit or cannibal raids. The difficulty also makes it pretty addictive.

Lo-Fi Games has a new post with news that Beta Update 0.64 is available for Kenshi.

Update 0.64

Turrets are the main feature this time. They still need a bit of tweeking and balancing but you can now research and build them. Only crossbow turrets are in for now, harpoon turrets will basically be the next tech level on from them, but I would like to wait and see how the feedback from the first turrets is first. Of course this will lay the foundation for personal crossbow weapons later on.

Indie Game Mag has a new preview of Kenshi. I mentioned the game last month, but it seems development is still going slow. So read on if your interested.

The game’s creator, Chris Hunt, describes Kenshi as, “an open-world, squad-based RPG where players have complete freedom to be good or bad, build a town, start a faction, fight cannibals & bandits, craft items or simply survive in the challenging, vast world.” The game is currently in Alpha, and available on Steam as an early access title.

Your first few hours in Kenshi are mostly spent learning the complex mechanics that make up the game’s freedom; the learning curve is steep but rewarding, as challenging objectives become simple survival. The first few battles are white knuckled, high risk, and a bit stressful as you try to figure out the mechanics of the game’s combat system.

What makes this combat even more enticing to watch are some of the visuals the game can achieve through the blood red twilight of a setting sun, casting long shadows to lend a sense of brevity and overture to the life and death format of combat. One of the best feelings in this game is seeing the shadows cast by the small outpost that you have built yourself, with the sun setting after a long and hard day’s work.

What does Kenshi have in store for us in the future? Chris Hunt says they’re working on a  “huge, new and diverse world map, 4x the size of the current one. Much later on it will have water, rivers and wildlife too,” he continued. “The gameplay will get much more complex, with environmental challenges added in – hunger, thirst and weather conditions. There will be a lot more combat details, for example, crawling when injured, robotics limbs to replace severed ones, unarmed fighting and ranged combat skills.”

Kenshi  is a Squad-Based Strategy RPG from Lo-Fi Games.  I overlooked the game for almost a whole year, but after trying the demo I had to spread the word.

Here is the latest video and some details.

Kenshi is a single player free-roaming Role Playing Game, with a Real-Time Strategy influence. Its squad-based, meaning you have a whole team of characters who can split up and go to different ends of the world. The game world is 400 square km of seamless terrain with a world map screen for fast-travel, Fallout style. You can play with one character, or with 50, and there are advantages to both. Combat is real-time and is based on swords and bows, action beat-em up style but with RPG stats influencing the outcome. No Magic. No fantasy cliches. Think of a combination of X-Com Apocalypse and Oblivion.

The developers also have news on a new update.

Here we go, my main focus for this update has been to fix the worst problems rather than adding new stuff.

The biggest fix was a big memory leak, which should fix, or at least reduce the dreaded "Super crash" that people were getting after long play sessions.

In the background Sam is working on the pathfinder overhaul that should fix all the movement/pathing related bugs, so hold off with any movement based bug reports until then. He should have that ready in about a month. Regular updates can still happen before then though.