Enshrouded's director tells us it's on track for 1.0, but that "there's no reason to stop" once the survival game hits full release

The giant Enshrouded Wake of the Water update has brought players flooding back once more; fittingly so, given that it's all about the introduction of the wet stuff to one of the best survival games in recent years. As we approach the two-year mark, I asked creative director Antony Christoulakis how much has changed for Keen Games since release, what the future holds as it builds towards the planned 1.0 launch in 2026, and what comes after that.

Christoulakis had plenty to tell me about what went into building the new Enshrouded update, but I was also eager to hear his reflection on how far Keen Games has come since launch. January will mark the two-year anniversary of Enshrouded, and Christoulakis says the team has been "quite overwhelmed" by its success. "We were quite blown away by the amount of players joining us - I think it's more than four and a half million right now already, which is really crazy."

In that time, the team has approximately doubled from around 40 developers to about 80, although it also outsources some of its work. "Everything's going fine, but we want to slow that [expansion] down now," Christoulakis says, "as we feel it's important that the team works efficiently. We were lucky that we have quite a success in, I think, a bit of a troubled time for the industry itself; you see lots of layoffs out there.

"Fortunately we could afford hiring more people, and we've been able to get quite cool hires to really push forwards, in nice ways, towards the 1.0 [launch] next year." He says the team has a date in mind, but isn't ready to lock in the specifics yet. "I think we are very good to go for release next year, but there are still bigger challenges." That includes plans for the console version, but also a range of other features and adjustments.

"Sharing your creations with other people is one big thing that we are actively working on already," Christoulakis continues, "but there are also other features that we think should be coming in for a full release." These include onboarding improvements at the start of the game, continued enhancements to combat, and tweaks to player controls and the camera.

As was expected, the post-update Enshrouded player count has shot back up and now sits in the 30-50,000 range, though Christoulakis is very satisfied that it continues to hover around the 10,000 mark even during the downtime between patches. "I think that's rather stable already," he remarks. "We are not a PvP game where you need other players around to actually have fun. It's totally cool that we have a big community around the game already, and the amount of time people invest in building incredible things that I honestly didn't imagine.

"There's crazy big structures being built, like lots of landmarks from Lord of the Rings are getting created, or other crazy pieces. You see those things pop up daily on various channels, and that makes us super happy that there's so much interest and fun people are having with this." He reiterates that Keen Games wants to offer easier ways to let others experience these creations; "Right now [players] share save games on our Discord, but that's obviously a bit of a technical way to do it."

Keen Games has a 'feature wish' board that players can make suggestions on, then vote on their favorite concepts. "There have been tens of thousands of ideas and upwards on these things," Christoulakis laughs, "it's a bit overwhelming to get to all of these things fast enough." He says the team reads it daily and considers what it should prioritize, but that it's simply "not possible to be fast enough for all of it."

"There have been things that we didn't have on our radar," he explains. "For example, for groups playing together - the game is PvE focused, the idea is really to play with your friends, so we didn't anticipate the extremely big wish of players to have separate quest progressions, as not everyone's always there when people play a shared server, and so you might miss a quest completion when you're not there." Keen Games was able to deliver on this, and now it's brought another long-term request with the addition of water.

Christoulakis reassures me that Enshrouded 1.0 won't be the end; far from it. "We plan to support the game with new content for years to come. There's no reason for us to stop after 1.0 now 'the game is finished.' We will continue to work on it full force. We don't have plans to start a new project after the 1.0 or something, there's nothing going on in that respect right now. This is our sole focus."

Enshrouded is 20% off on Steam until Monday November 24, so you'll pay just $23.99 / £19.99 for your copy. If you've been waiting, now might be the ideal time to head here and dive in.