Cold on Palworld? Enshrouded, this month's other big survival game, mashes Valheim survival with Dark Souls combat for the exact same price
Jan. 24, 2024The Steam Next Fest juggernaut is out now
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
If you’re looking for a brand-new early access survival game to play this week, but can’t stomachPalworld’s particular blend of cartoon color, animal cruelty, and Steam domination, then I’m here to remind you about Enshrouded.
That combination seemed to capture the community’s imagination during Next Fest, where itwas the biggest game by pretty much any metric Valve could throw at us. Since then, it also skirted the top ten on Steam’s wishlist charts, contending with the likes of Hades 2, Frostpunk 2, Nightingale, and Hollow Knight: Silksong. There seems to be a bit of a multiplayer snafu affecting co-op play at time of writing, and that’s dragging the user reviews down a bit, but that’s not likely to detract from the experience for too long.
Enshrouded is unlikely to hit the same dizzying heights as Palworld or Valheim - I don’t know about you, but I only have time for one all-consuming survival game in my life at a time. But it’s certainly well-positioned to have a long lifetime, with a good amount of hype behind it and some positive early impressions. If you’re looking for a grittier survival game experience to round out the winter with, this could be it.
With two genre smash-hits in a week, maybe our list of thebest survival gamesneeds an update.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.
Five years later, PUBG creator PlayerUnknown finally reveals his massive open-world survival game projects, aiming for “realistic worlds thousands of kilometers wide” across three games
Horizon Zero Dawn-style open-world survival game previously blasted as “shameless” seemingly gets a thumbs up from Sony as it confirms a PS5 release
Todd Howard “rolled his eyes” at the idea of Troy Baker playing Indiana Jones in the Great Circle, but the Bethesda boss later told him “you’re doing a hell of a job”
