If you’ve spent dozens of hours gliding across Embervale, clearing Shrouded zones, and building sprawling bases with friends, you’ve probably wondered who made Enshrouded. The game blew up almost instantly after its early access launch, selling over 2 million copies in its first month, and it’s easy to see why. It blends familiar survival crafting loops with deep RPG progression, smooth co-op play, and a beautiful, destructible open world that feels nothing like other games in the genre. Most players don’t know the team behind it has been making polished, innovative games for over 15 years before they ever started working on this title.
Who Made Enshrouded? Meet Keen Games, the Studio Behind the Hit RPG
When people ask who made Enshrouded, many are surprised to learn the team is not a massive AAA studio with hundreds of employees. It was built by Keen Games, a mid-sized independent developer based in Frankfurt, Germany, founded in 2008. The studio currently has around 70 full-time staff, most of whom have worked together for close to a decade on their previous hit, Portal Knights, a family-friendly voxel sandbox RPG that sold over 3 million copies worldwide. Keen Games self-published Enshrouded for early access, which let them make creative choices without pressure from a big publisher to hit unrealistic launch deadlines or cut features to save costs.
The team started development on Enshrouded in 2019, right after they wrapped up post-launch support for Portal Knights. They knew they wanted to stay in the sandbox RPG space, but wanted to make something more mature, more ambitious, and targeted at older players who loved survival games but were tired of common genre pain points. Many of the core systems in Enshrouded are direct responses to feedback they got from Portal Knights players over the years, including requests for deeper combat, more flexible building, and larger, more dangerous open zones to explore.
Core Design Inspirations That Shaped Enshrouded’s Unique Identity
The team at Keen Games drew inspiration from a wide range of games and genres to build Enshrouded, and they’ve never been shy about sharing those references. First and foremost, they wanted to fix the parts of survival games that feel like tedious chores instead of fun. The team intentionally cut basic survival needs like hunger and thirst from the final design, a choice that confused some industry peers at first, but ended up being one of the most popular parts of the game for players. They wanted players to spend their time exploring, fighting, and building, not running around looking for berries every 10 minutes just to stay alive.
Other key inspirations include The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the gliding mechanics and open, reward-driven exploration, Valheim for the relaxed, social co-op loop, and Dark Souls for the tense, high-stakes combat in Shrouded zones. They tested over 12 different versions of the Shrouded corruption mechanic before landing on the final version, tweaking everything from the rate the corruption meter fills to the types of enemies that spawn in corrupted zones to make sure it felt challenging but not unfair. From the very start of development, the team stuck to three non-negotiable design priorities:
You can see those priorities in every part of the game, from the shared skill tree that lets players pick complementary roles for co-op runs, to the flexible building system that works for both small survival huts and massive fantasy castles. All terrain in the game is fully destructible and deformable, a feature the team spent 3 years refining to make sure it didn't cause performance issues even in 16-player co-op lobbies with huge, complex builds.
How Community Feedback Shaped Enshrouded’s Early Access Roadmap
Keen Games has been unusually open and responsive to player feedback ever since Enshrouded launched in early access. Within the first week of launch, they set up a public Trello board that lists all planned updates, sorted by how often players requested each feature. They also run monthly community streams where developers answer questions directly, show off work-in-progress content, and ask for feedback on proposed changes before they roll out to the live game.
They release small hotfixes multiple times a week, and major content patches every 6 to 8 weeks, which is far faster than most other early access survival games. Some of the most requested features they’ve added in the first year of early access include extra character customization slots, expanded base storage options, new weapon types like spears and crossbows, and a creative mode for players who just want to build without worrying about combat or resource gathering. I’ve played a lot of early access survival games, and it’s rare to see a studio that’s this open about their development process, especially when they’re handling a hit game with millions of active players. They don’t shy away from admitting when they made a mistake, either. For example, when a recent patch accidentally broke the gliding mechanic, they put out a public apology within an hour, and rolled out a fix in less than 3 hours.
What’s Next for Enshrouded and Its Development Team
Keen Games has shared a rough roadmap for Enshrouded’s full 1.0 launch, expected sometime in the next 12 months. Before the full launch, they plan to add three new large biomes, a complete main story campaign with voiced cutscenes, two new playable classes, and endgame raid content for groups of 4 to 8 players. The team has confirmed they have no plans to add paid DLC or microtransactions after launch, and all post-1.0 content will be free for all players who bought the early access or full version of the game. That means you don’t have to worry about your friends being locked out of content because they didn’t buy an expensive expansion pack, which fits their original priority of making co-op as accessible as possible.
They’re also working on console versions of the game for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, which are expected to launch around the same time as the full 1.0 PC release. Cross-play will be supported across all platforms, so you’ll be able to play with friends no matter what system they own. The team has said they plan to support Enshrouded with regular free updates for at least 5 years after the 1.0 launch, as long as players are still enjoying the game and requesting new content.
Now that you know who made Enshrouded, it’s easier to see why the game feels so polished and focused on player fun. The team at Keen Games isn’t just a group of developers trying to cash in on the survival genre trend—they’re long-time fans of the genre who set out to make the kind of game they wanted to play themselves. If you haven’t tried Enshrouded yet, it’s worth checking out even in early access, especially if you enjoy playing with friends. The regular updates and active community mean the game will only get better as time goes on, and you can even have a say in what features get added next if you join their official community forums or Discord server.