Procedural generation of levels is an invention that is decades old, but it is still being used to this day, sometimes with mixed results. If you are wondering whether the maps in Enshrouded are procedurally generated or not, we’ll be glad to answer the question in the article below.
Is There Procedural Generation in Enshrouded?
Enshrouded will have a static map, so no, the maps in Enshrouded are not generated procedurally. However, there are some aspects of the map that are procedurally generated.
Based on what the developers of Enshrouded (Keen Games) are saying, it won’t be the gruesome randomness that we sometimes see in modern games, with terrains that are way too abstract, out of place, or otherwise illogical for the game. Let’s see the statement below:
When we are creating the world, we use procedural tools to create the map, but then we use the old-fashioned way, by hand, by free range game designer to create an immersive hand-crafted experience, just to make it as exciting and beautiful as it can be.
Keen Games on Procedural Generation in Enshrouded
It is highly commendable that a developer has decided to take the path of organic content creation within a game in this day and age, one where AI looms over us and stirs up controversy regularly.
In addition to this, a developer from Keen Games called Toast has made a response regarding this matter on the Steam Discussions:
Hi there! 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 story telling and world building that we wanted to do with our game.
There’s definitely upsides to both systems, but because many survival games already use procedural worlds we wanted to do something different. We are definitely aware of concerns players have for replayability, but rest assured we have a lot planned to make sure our game is rich with content and can be played for a very long time 🙂
Toast from Keen Games
Kudos to Keen Games for these efforts, and I hope we are in for a classic.
For more information, check if Keen Games has added multiplayer to Enshrouded.