Kenshi - My second-favorite game =D

[Naiba]

Picked this game up a few days ago, been playing almost as much as KSP since.

Post-apocalyptic squad-based RPG, with swords, a real wasteland with hundreds of miles of open desert, dauntingly expansive, feels as though you're some tiny and insignificant part of it all and need to earn your right to survive and prosper in it rather than just have it handed to you "because you're the player and the entire universe should revolve around you for being the player".

I haven’t played anything that's felt like this since the original two Fallout games and I never expected to have an experience even remotely like that ever again (Arg, Bethesda, why hath you forsaken me!). So +1 to the two people working on Kenshi atm. (although it was just one guy until recently, going by the name of "Captain Deathbeard". Yeah... He hired an art guy off the back of sales from greenlight publicity so the game should start looking a lot nicer over the coming months/years)

The general idea is that everything that happens in the game story wise, is all emergent, and only partly depending on your actions. The entire world, and everyone in it, are all persistent, and simulated real-time, so that group of bandits that attack you, loot all your stuff, and leave you for dead in the first few minutes of the game (if you're stupid enough to get into a fight that quickly) will still be out there somewhere, getting into fights, growing in number and getting better stuff, right up till the moment you raid their camp with an army crying "REVENGE!!!".

Factions will war, make alliances, trade, expand, shrink, maybe be totally destroyed, all based on the unscripted actions of the NPCs, Stuff won't sit around waiting for you to get involved, big paradigm shifting events will catch up with you eventually. Even if you don’t bother getting involved and actively avoid it, the world around you will change regardless.

All this cool stuff is currently not yet implemented, and there's so much more planned. There's no way I could go into all of it, but it sounds fantastic.

As the game stands, there's not much to do other than go out into the desert and survive, get stronger, fight bandits (or be bandits) and build a large squad of elite characters, fitted out with the best equipment, and maybe build a few bases here and there.

Medical system is nice, inventory is a lot like Shores of Hazeron, 4X timewarp for traveling across the desert at a reasonable speed, combat feels pretty smooth, the vast desert wasteland is a vast desert wasteland (but full of trade caravans, empire patrols, and bands of raiders/bandits). The next few updates (in the coming few months) should be a new set of character types, mining, and possibly crafting/manufacturing and research.

Some links:

(official website FAQ, good reading)

http://www.lofigames.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=6&Itemid=53

(year old trailer)

(because Desura)

http://www.desura.com/games/kenshi

(indiDB reviews)

http://www.indiedb.com/games/kenshi/reviews

It's one of the 9 greenlit games on Steam too, but Steam's community website is being awkward as usual.

It's free up to 2 characters, don't know if the demo has any other limits but the character one, don't think so.

Anyone here playing/played the game? It’s interesting enough to chat about.

[EndlessWaves]

I did grab it speculatively using blue coins (loyalty points) when it was part of Indiefort #1 on gamersgate but when I tried it a couple of patches ago there was very little game there - pretty much just the world and a few buyable items.

I wasn't around when KSP was initially released but I'd put Kenshi around about the point KSP would be if you took the demo and removed the mun and staging - there's stuff to do but no complexity to keep you interested yet.

[Naiba]

I bought it off the back of what it's going to become more than anything. (i got KSP back at 0.8, before the Mun, or even symmetry)