The most popular game on this October's Steam Next Fest is this survival game called Enshrouded that borrows some ideas from amazing games like Valheim and even adds some sprinkles of Dark Souls with its boss fights. I didn't get to play the game in full as I only had 8 hours to see as much content as possible. Which this game really doesn't want you to do as it's clearly made to be enjoyed slowly and see everything it has to offer. Also, something to note is that you get 8 hours per character so I could just make a new one and see how the building feels and looks.

The game was developed by Keen Games (also known for Portal Knight) and it will see you and up to 16 players work together to fight bosses, build grand halls and survive a corrupting fog - which you can see more of below.

In Enshrouded, you start off with nothing and must scavenge through the ruined remains of a lost kingdom and fend off beasts in the typical form of wolves and also some atypical forms like these weird fog zombies? You'll explore forests, caves and dungeons searching for treasures and materials to craft with. Like we said, this action RPG also has Dark Souls-like bosses so be prepared to use everything in your arsenal to try and beat them, spamming left click is not really an option, believe me I tried. You can also use fighting skills and powerful spells which can be customized to your own playstyle thanks to the game's in-depth skill tree system.

Let's get into all the direct comparisons. The game has a more realistic survival genre look like Valheim or Rust, but its building system is voxel-based which basically means that every voxel can be added or removed like Minecraft. Also, the game isn't really physics based, so you don't have to worry that your buildings are gonna topple over while building, and no more adding wooden supports just to make your floor one tile longer. That voxel-based object modification has other implications in the game too. Almost all of the enviroments are completely terraformable, which means if you want to get through a wall, just use a pickaxe, if you wanna climb a hill, carve some stairs and make a staircase. It's really taking all the things that make Minecraft fun, without directly copying it because of the realistic aestetic.

I really enjoyed the voxel-y building mechanics for the little time I dedicated to it. It's fairly simple but can also be incredibly advanced if you're looking to build a cool house, a huge castle or even a medieval village. Since I'm really not a good builder in these types of games, I really liked how you can just throw stuff together and it always just works.

Filling the map in some predetermined spots is also the shroud which is home to most of the bosses and the fog zombie looking dudes. Entering it starts a timer for how long you can actually be inside the shroud, but since I'm such a good reviewer, I have no idea what happens when that timer runs out since I didn't test it. I'm guessing you just die. If you want to know what happens, do it and then let me know, I'll totally edit the article.

There's no release date for Enshrouded yet, but you can wishlist it on Steam. The game will come out in early access first, in which Keen Games plans to keep it in for about a year. The demo is still playable according to the Steam page so if you're looking for some quick survival fun, or for a co-op adventure with your friends, definitely give Enshrouded a shot as its really a combination of a lot of different survival games. It needs to fix some minor bugs and jank but overall, I'm excited for this release and can't wait to see what Enshrouded becomes when it fully releases.