A Lost Drone staggered up to my outpost, a lone oasis in the middle of a desert. Harried by a Skimmer, he collapsed from his injuries before my guards put down the monster.

Having saved his life not once but twice, by bandaging his wounds before he bled out, I did the only reasonable thing and put him in my trade convoy to the nearest city to sell him as a slave and recoup the value of the medical supplies.

Though still not fully healed by the time we arrived, the Slaver Boss in town was more than happy to pay a pittance for a new recruit. Only then did he realize his mistake: In his haste to make a quick buck fleecing this out-of-town trader out of a prospective slave, he had forgotten that all of his cages were already full. He had no place to put his newest purchase.

Taking the new slave over his shoulder, he sprinted out of his Slave Shop and all the way across town to the only other place in town with proper cells: The local prison. Dashing inside, he threw his latest purchase into the nearest jail cell, and began attaching the Prisoner Shackles to mark them as a slave.

That was when the Police Chief, who had been watching the whole affair, walked over and threw open the door of the jail cell, setting him free. "You've served your time. Go."

--------------------

So, reviewing Kenshi. Despite what the trailer says, Kenshi is not much of a struggle. You could starve, in the sense that the game technically does have a hunger system. But you never will, because food is cheap and abundant, from the infinitely-respawning stock of vendors in every city. You could die, but that won't happen either, because everyone in the world of Kenshi is extremely morally averse to killing, even the mindless monsters and indeed your own player characters as well. Even if you, for some reason, tried to kill yourself by not bandaging your own wounds, it's more likely than not that some passing slavers would save your life against your will like this distopian universe's very aggressive version of universal healthcare. Kenshi is a game about things not going according to plan, but having very little cost for failure, and virtually no 'game over' situations.

So after saying that the trailer is all a lie, why do I still recommend it? Kenshi is a game that requires you to challenge yourself, and set your own goals. Do you want to be a lone action hero gunning down everyone in your path single-handedly? You can do that. Do you want to play a slightly-off version of SimCity, building up a settlement in the most improbably inhospitable place imaginable? You can do that, too. The overall experience is a lot like playing Dwarf Fortress. There's no quests, no goal. It's just a big sandbox to screw around in. That said, while Kenshi is a more modern style of game, not all the comparisons are as favorable. For a start, despite having 3D graphics, the gameplay is effectively 2D, will almost no ability to affect the fixed landscape of the game world outside of building walls. And while having direct control over all of your characters a la an RTS is not unwelcome at first, it lends itself to a fiddly sort of micromanagement where the more time you spend with the game paused, individually directing each of your squad members, the more effective you are, both in combat and out of it. You can issue Job orders for the AI to control your units when you aren't looking, but it will happily assign the same solitary job to a dozen people, sending them all running across your base, only to have the other eleven running back once the job is filled. And that assuming the job works at all, and none of your recruits get stuck on the terrain half-way there. Make no mistake, despite being out of early access, there are still bugs a plenty, features that don't quite work, and even a few hard game crashes.

Kenshi is not an amazing game. But it has a lot of potential. It's an ambitious project that I think will get better with time, with continued patches from the Devs, and more mods being made. It's the kind of game like I like messing around in even though it isn't perfect. And the kind of game that I hope to see more of in the future.

A Lost Drone staggered up to my outpost, a lone oasis in the middle of a desert. Harried by a Skimmer, he collapsed from his injuries before my guards put down the monster. Having saved his life not once but twice, by bandaging his wounds before he bled out, I did the only reasonable thing and put him in my trade convoy to the nearest city to sell him as a slave and recoup the value of the medical supplies. Though still not fully healed by the time we arrived, the Slaver Boss in town was more than happy to pay a pittance for a new recruit. Only then did he realize his mistake: In his haste to make a quick buck fleecing this out-of-town trader out of a prospective slave, he had forgotten that all of his cages were already full. He had no place to put his newest purchase. Taking the new slave over his shoulder, he sprinted out of his Slave Shop and all the way across town to the only other place in town with proper cells: The local prison. Dashing inside, he threw his latest purchase into the nearest jail cell, and began attaching the Prisoner Shackles to mark them as a slave. That was when the Police Chief, who had been watching the whole affair, walked over and threw open the door of the jail cell, setting him free. "You've served your time. Go." -------------------- So, reviewing Kenshi. Despite what the trailer says, Kenshi is not much of a struggle. You could starve, in the sense that the game technically does have a hunger system. But you never will, because food is cheap and abundant, from the infinitely-respawning stock of vendors in every city. You could die, but that won't happen either, because everyone in the world of Kenshi is extremely morally averse to killing, even the mindless monsters and indeed your own player characters as well. Even if you, for some reason, tried to kill yourself by not bandaging your own wounds, it's more likely than not that some passing slavers would save your life against your will like this distopian universe's very aggressive version of universal healthcare. Kenshi is a game about things not going according to plan, but having very little cost for failure, and virtually no 'game over' situations. So after saying that the trailer is all a lie, why do I still recommend it? Kenshi is a game that requires you to challenge yourself, and set your own goals. Do you want to be a lone action hero gunning down everyone in your path single-handedly? You can do that. Do you want to play a slightly-off version of SimCity, building up a settlement in the most improbably inhospitable place imaginable? You can do that, too. The overall experience is a lot like playing Dwarf Fortress. There's no quests, no goal. It's just a big sandbox to screw around in. That said, while Kenshi is a more modern style of game, not all the comparisons are as favorable. For a start, despite having 3D graphics, the gameplay is effectively 2D, will almost no ability to affect the fixed landscape of the game world outside of building walls. And while having direct control over all of your characters a la an RTS is not unwelcome at first, it lends itself to a fiddly sort of micromanagement where the more time you spend with the game paused, individually directing each of your squad members, the more effective you are, both in combat and out of it. You can issue Job orders for the AI to control your units when you aren't looking, but it will happily assign the same solitary job to a dozen people, sending them all running across your base, only to have the other eleven running back once the job is filled. And that assuming the job works at all, and none of your recruits get stuck on the terrain half-way there. Make no mistake, despite being out of early access, there are still bugs a plenty, features that don't quite work, and even a few hard game crashes. Kenshi is not an amazing game. But it has a lot of potential. It's an ambitious project that I think will get better with time, with continued patches from the Devs, and more mods being made. It's the kind of game like I like messing around in even though it isn't perfect. And the kind of game that I hope to see more of in the future.