More than five million players have entered Enshrouded ahead of its 1.0 launch on PC and PS5. The October release brings a larger endgame, while Keen Games says it plans to support the game for years.
For nearly three years, Enshrouded has been playable through Steam Early Access. That ends on 15 October 2026, when Keen Games launches version 1.0 on PC and PlayStation 5. The PS5 release marks the game's console debut and will support PS5 Pro. More than five million players have entered its survival world, a figure that does not represent sales. Creative Director Antony Christoulakis says the response exceeded the team's hopes.
The Early Access gamble
Enshrouded launched in Early Access on Steam in early 2024 and sold one million copies within four days. By August, sales had passed three million units. Keen's newer milestone counts more than five million players, not copies purchased. Christoulakis said self-publishing gave the studio control over development for the first time, along with the freedom to make a survival game on its own terms.
Keen's route to this release runs through Sacred 3 and Portal Knights. The latter, a cooperative action RPG with sandbox elements, sold millions. Enshrouded has since become the studio's most successful title. The game is growing in a crowded survival market. Dragonwilds recently drew nearly three million players, another sign of the genre's reach. Christoulakis argues that survival games can coexist because players may return to them over time, especially when developers keep updating them.
A larger endgame
The 1.0 map expansion opens a northern region that players could not previously enter. They could already see flying islands there. Now the new area pushes progression beyond the Veilwater Basin and is built for endgame play. A lava biome features floating islands. New enemies and progression content are also on the way. Keen says existing bases will remain intact, so players can carry their saves into the release without starting over.
Combat changes extend beyond the new region. Mages gain heavy attacks and jump attacks. New spells add crowd control and area effects, while players can also summon skeletons. Level progression continues for every class, supported by new skills and armour. New weapons are coming too. Keen is adding enemy types to existing factions as well as to the new biome, aiming to bring more variety and challenge throughout the game, not only at the end.
Community feedback has changed how cooperative quest progression works. Keen added a way to replay completed quests, addressing a problem for players who missed rewards because they were absent from a session. The studio says player requests often matched its own plans. This particular fix, though, was not on the original roadmap.
Building beyond launch
One of the main creation tools is Sparkworks, a logic system that lets players add interactive features to their bases. Levers and traps are among the possibilities. Keen compares Sparkworks' broad role to redstone in Minecraft, while noting that the system works differently. Players can use it to build playable experiences, then share them through Adventure Sharing.
Christoulakis says development will continue after 1.0, with Keen's full team supporting Enshrouded for years. The plan includes free content and paid content. Keen says paid downloadable content should offer value, and rules out a move to free-to-play or pay-to-win monetisation. The studio also plans to show a separate quality-of-life addition for the building system soon, but has not provided details.
Keen has barred internal use of AI for development and assets for now. Christoulakis cited unresolved copyright questions and said the studio prioritises its team's creative skills. He described the policy as a current position while those questions remain unsettled, rather than a categorical rejection of the technology.
PS5 first and Xbox later
Keen is targeting 60 frames per second on both the standard PS5 and PS5 Pro. The Pro version will include enhanced rendering features. Standard PS5 players can choose a 30fps quality mode with rendering features on a par with Pro. A 60fps performance mode is also available, and Christoulakis says it looks close to the Pro version.
The PS5 release will have dedicated servers, but cross-play will not be ready at launch. Keen still intends to work on cross-play in future updates. DualSense support includes rumble and adaptive triggers. Gyro controls cover aiming and gliding, while the touch pad handles map scrolling. The controller can also produce sound, and players can customise the controls. Christoulakis was unsure whether those features would work on PC as well. PC co-op supports groups of up to 16 players.
The Xbox Series S|X version is now planned for Spring 2027, after the PC and PS5 launch. Keen says its moderately sized team is bringing platforms over in stages because each version adds work to later updates. Focusing first on PC and PS5 gave the studio more time to optimise those releases. Keen has also described improvements to performance and visual fidelity, including its in-house Brick Renderer, designed to show more voxel detail at a distance. DLSS Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction are not currently planned, though Keen may consider them later. The studio has no current plan for DLSS 5.
A 60fps target is a developer's stated aim, not an independent measurement of how consistently a game holds that rate in every situation. Dedicated servers support multiplayer sessions, but they do not provide cross-play. PC and PS5 players cannot join the same sessions at launch.
