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Enshrouded (Early Access)

This will probably by my game of the year, in the year that it actually comes out; I was immediately hooked on it. It's functionally very similar to Valheim; a solo or co-op world where you explore, craft, build a base and explore. Except that it really puts Valheim to shame - it's already got WAY more content. It has an immersive hand-crafted world, a fantastic building system, satisfying combat and loads of content. It's been patched regularly during EA so far and has a really interesting roadmap of things still to come.

Pros

  • A large varied skill tree which allows you to take skills from all over the place
  • Deformable terrain. You can mine tunnels, create a base INSIDE a cave, explosive barrels blow chunks out of the land and walls
  • The building system is excellent. It's kind of like minecraft for blocks, but also optional snapping, roofing, lots of decorative objects and an undo button
  • The deformable terrain means you can actually build a base inside a mountain, unlike Valheim which only lets you deform downwards
  • The huge world map is hand crafted, which makes it actually interesting to explore. There are tons of things to discover and it's really rewarding
  • Melee, ranged and magic builds, or something in between
  • Has co-op, but works perfectly well solo
  • Everything about the game can be customised. Day/night length, difficulty, enemy amount, XP gains etc. You can also introduce hunger mechanics
  • Lots of gear to be found, which can be upgraded and have gem slots
  • You acquire crafters, assistants and villagers over time which is rewarding and unlocks loads of recipes
  • Grappling hook & glider are great for getting about
  • Looks amazing and runs really well
  • Re-speccing your skills is cheap
  • The land outside your base restores to it's original state over time, so you can loot places more than once
  • It has something I really love in these kinds of games - the ruined buildings you come across give you inspiration for your own bases - or you can use them as your base and just repair them
  • No weight limit (looking at you, Valheim)
  • Lots of lore books to find, and those tableaus you find in Fallout locations like a love letter on a desk, and two skeletons in a bed
  • The map is actually really welld designed. Things like double jump are often a shortcut but never required, and it introduced you really well to new concepts as you unlock them (or you can just ignore everything and go off and do your own thing)

Cons

  • The gem forges are cool, but it doesn't make sense that they only take a specific kind of archaic essence. Essence should be universal and just use different amounts, like runes.
  • The land outside your base restores to it's original state over time, so your structures and tunnels disappear. Would be great if you could keep your shortcuts
  • Inventory management is annoying. There is no "Deposit to nearby chests", which makes emptying my inventory a chore
  • You can create multiple bases, but magic chests only share they inventory to the base they're in, which makes building more than one base impractical
  • The main mechanic of the game - the risk of dying if you spend too long in the shroud - is completely negated by the fact that if you log out, you respawn back at your base. So if you're going to die, just log out and you're fine.
  • Really boring AI. Enemies often just stand there. Could also use more enemy types
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