Hello, and welcome to the inaugural Bonfire; our new series wherein a few of our authors gather around and chat about a game that we’ve all been playing through.
The subject of this Bonfire discussion is Lo-Fi Games’ Kenshi, which — by it’s own description — is “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 warlord, an adventurer, a farmer, a slave, or just food for the cannibals. Research new equipment and craft new gear.”
Dann: The three of us have been playing through Kenshi recently. It’s an open-world, sandbox title which doesn’t actually have character-led levelling. It’s also one of the first games that hit Steam through their Early Access platform, and has been in a state of development for -oh- maybe four years?
Toby: Crikey, it feels that long. You can tell someones put a lot of time into it.
Dann: I’ve got to say that I’ve had mixed experiences with it. It’s taken a while, though, but I feel like I’m starting to peel back the more obtuse layers and really enjoy the depth of the game that’s hidden beneath the surface. And under all those bloody menus.
Toby: Wait, menus?
Craig: Aye, VERY hard to get into. Especially due to the camera, grrr. But, once you learn to double-click your portrait the enjoyment ramps.
Toby: Yeah, you can tell there is a great game here, and you can feel and taste it all over, but it’s just below the surface, hidden behind archaic bugs and the camera
Craig: Agreed more bugs need to be fixed and the devs need to concentrate on those bugs (and finessing) first THEN content as there’s already ample content
Dann: The camera was always going to be a big point of contention with the game. I came to terms with it quite quickly though once I realised a few of the shortcuts, and most importantly when I started up my second game with a larger group. All of a sudden, the speed that the camera moved between my groups of units immediately counteracted any complaints I had about it.
When I was talking about menus earlier I was referring mostly as to how certain menus were still tied to the buttons down the bottom, or through the right-click menus on the units. In order to trade items you have to manually drag between two people as to open up both of the inventories. Inventories which might well have secondary inventories themselves. It didn’t feel very intuitive, but then there’s an absolute mass of stuff to handle.
Toby: I normally drop it all on the floor.
Dann: Well then, you’re a bloody litterer.
Toby: Kenshi has some seriously powerful mechanics under its surface, as you say. The camera is actually really well implemented ( clunkiness aside). The base building is more powerful, and definitely more intuitive than most survival games, and Fallout 4’s base builder
Craig: I liked the setting – how deep it ran. That said, it did feel like the devs wanted their own take on the Fallout franchise.
Dann: I confess, I tried out the base building, but didn’t get far as I kept getting killed by the wildlife. Swamp Raptors actually consumed the corpse of the person I had manning the farm while I sent the rest of my group off to the nearest town to trade up.
Actually, both my efforts at farming ended up like that; as I didn’t build walls.
Toby: tut tut
Craig: Agreed, it would be nice if there were cheaper bodyguards but at a lower “rating”
Dann: But then, that’s part of the world and the game’s difficulty, I feel: The fact that the world exists with or without you — you’re not the hero out to save the world.
Craig: Yeah – it certainly doesn’t hold your hand
Toby: I felt very much like a copper baron, starting a business selling 10 thousand dollars worth of copper a day.
Craig: Hehe, I was going for iron, didn’t earn much
Toby: Yeah, that was the thing that hit me when I first booted it up. I expected something like Skyrim’s tutorial mission, something to teach you the mechanics and give you a decent blade. But no, you get dropped in, you have a few text based tutorials so you’re not a complete idiot in game, but then it leaves you
Dann: Aye, and that’s really cool. You can see the ticking world in action, you can follow a trader from city to city if you wish; picking the people they have defended against clean as to survive. The world doesn’t come to an end, the nations continue in their warming cold-war..
Toby: That’s how I got my first big boon, actually. Some enemy knights got shanked outside the city walls. I grabbed their gear, suited up and sold the rest. When that happens in other games it feels weird that the saviour of the world is hiding in the gutter, pinching the money purse from the waist of a drunkard. In Kenshi, it makes sense
Dann: It’s a miserable and hopeless setting really. You’re not a hero, because there aren’t heroes, there’s just survivors.
Ultimately my ex-soldier in my second playthrough was downed and killed by a roving group of hungry bandits; he’d survived a few skirmishes (the combat looks amazing, by the way) and even played dead out of one, but the last fight he was torn to shreds by people who were simply starving and fighting for scraps.
Craig: Did anyone else get jailed in their game? Whilst exploring one of the towns I entered one of the houses got told off then went outside and town soldiers arrested me, I’ve got to say it was very immersive
Dann: Haha, so you didn’t get to rummage through all of their cupboards and smash their pots looking for gold then?
Craig: No, it was by complete accident ‘cos in Kenshi all the houses aren’t overtly sign posted like mainstream games are – and that’s the main thing about it, you simply learn from your mistakes.
Dann: I did like that the trading hours varied, and that the bars were only really properly populated at night. That said, it was a bit odd walking into a town and finding out that it was just 3 bars and 6 shops; I was surprised the game didn’t compensate for town populations – although that’s a flaw of practically all RPGs.
Toby: I presume that most towns work as waystations rather than population centers, there’s only a few people that actually stick around, most people leave after a few days.
Dann: In that way it’s very realistic, I suppose. Just look at a map of old British pubs for reference, haha.
Toby: It really helps with the immersion, that all of these people and wanderers are trying to make ends meet, even they are better than you.
Craig: Agreed, although I do hope they tighten up the UI before launch… I mean the floor button looked like it was from a mid 90’s era title. I often find myself leaving games behind if they have a clunky UI.
Toby: Yes, aesthetically and graphically it feels like a follow up to Fallout 1/2, one which eventually launched a decade too late.
Craig: Agreed.
Dann: Arguably, and sadly, the visuals are going to be the main thing that stands in the way for a lot of people who would otherwise jump at the game. In many ways though there are a lot of games out there with obscene levels of depth -like Kenshi- which have major payoffs in everything except for the visual departments; just look at Wargaming in general, Grand Strategy, or even titles like Mount & Blade. Sure, some of those have a few years under their belt, but then similarly they don’t need high tech visuals in order to deliver their message and be a solid, fun experience.
That said, Kenshi’s fun, similar to those examples, comes in surviving against the odds.
Craig: Yeah, it is very fun. But – with all the years Kenshi has been in EA now on Steam it still didn’t have enough grip on it to grab me and pull me in for the long run.
Toby: Yeah, it’s hard to build narrative without any arcs or quests. They can’t make missions, because then you become the hero, and that defeats the point of the game.
Craig: True but there’s always other options… I just find it missing “fluff” – chatting NPCs, reasons to travel, reasons to settle, etc.
Dann: Let me put it a different way then. What would you say that your biggest achievement was in the game? The nearest you got to being a successful survivor(/group) within the world of Kenshi?
Toby: Becoming self sufficient at my base, with a fairly sized group, surviving the trip between two towns, running away from any hungry and dying rebels.
Craig: Mining, making money close to a town knowing it was fairly well protected and only a stone’s throw away if I got attacked, and yours?
Dann: Mine? I didn’t have one, I need to keep playing really. I settled by a swamp on my second play; as we first set up farming efforts we were attacked by swamp giraffes. We managed to survive, and I used my remaining people to drag the unconscious inside and fix them up… at that moment I felt like I had a chance though.
We stripped the crane creatures of leather, sold it for profit and used it to finish building up the facilities, soon people were on their feet and I started automating feeding the farms with the wells. Then my traders got locked into combat. What was awesome was seeing the Old Soldier I mentioned earlier defending the weaker people. Unlike everyone else he was blocking, dodging, and knocking enemies out left-right-and-centre.
I got so dependent on the guy’s skills that I almost set him up at the midpoint between my camp and the waypost. But, then my swamp farms were set upon by Swamp-raptors, who gobbled up all of our food -easy come, easy go- and then actually killed and ate one of my people.
Obviously we couldn’t go after them, but we couldn’t move either. We didn’t survive much longer, ran out of food and goodies. Just another abandoned outpost in the post-apocalyptic waste. Nothing remarkable at all really, but it was a story, and it was a sequence of unscripted events.
I could have simply taken my people in another direction. We could have tried to survive outside the waypost as bandits. We could probably have even tried to take out the guards, there weren’t many. Or we could have headed further into civilisation, but then the solider had started with a bounty.
I’m very happy with that level of options; but I suppose it depends on the diversity of enemies, and the depth of the base-building.
Craig: and that’s what makes Kenshi what it is – a story of events, all unscripted.
Dann: Do my warriors get dragged off into a cave after they are beaten? Can I rescue them and bring them back to the town I built? Apparently slavers CAN grab your people and drag them around the map, so, in short, yes. And that’s great.
Toby: I hope that it’s got a good world, in that I can venture out to other little towns and outposts, maybe even find the bases of the rebels, then have the choice of helping them with food, or killing them and looting the village.
Dann: There’s only one way to find out, T. Head out and explore!
Kenshi is available on Steam, you can find it’s Steam page here.
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