Keen Games released a behind the scenes look at how their team created the world of the upcoming Survival RPG, Enshrouded. We got a short explanation of the workflow and the studio’s art director Yonas showed how the tools worked in more detail.

Most of the game world is handcrafted, with algorithms used only as a supplement tool to ease and fasten the process. This allows the developers to create unique and interesting assets and make quick changes if they don’t like something. Also, it gives them more time to create a world with more meaningful discoveries, tie the world’s lore to the various points of interest around the map, and fill them with a rich history. 

In the recent devlog, art director Yonas showed us how they create the world of Enshrouded using voxel brushes, negative stamps, voxel objects, and splines. He quickly put together a small hill with a cave going through it, and revealed how they use an algorithm to help them make the terrain and buildings. With minimal changes, they can place down buildings and the algorithm picks a random house from a list of hand-crafted assets.

Similarly, they can draw a line on the ground where a path has to go, and quickly choose the type of road, as in this case, it was a dirt path. The program would perfectly draw one across the line that was made.

A neat feature of the tool they use is they can run around the world and see changes happen in real-time. This allows the designers to add a building like a tower and see it pop up in the game. They can change the height and position to the exact point they want, and can even experiment by changing the biome type by adding entire forests, making it very quick to see a change they want to achieve.

Do you prefer handcrafted or procedurally generated worlds? Let me know in the comments.