Kenshi, Lo-Fi Games' eccentric sandbox RPG, left Early Access almost a year ago, but the developer has started work on a new version. This has become a distraction from work on Kenshi 2, however, so Lo-Fi Games' CEO is asking the community to help him decide how to proceed. 

Lo-Fi recently announced that it's switched to Unreal Engine 4, touting better graphics, performance, new features like cloth physics and other improvements. This isn't just for the sequel, either, which was announced back in March. Porting the original Kenshi's assets and trying to make them work with Unreal is now taking up more time than creating Kenshi 2, and Hunt's not certain it's worth it. 

"Personally I feel like it would be better to focus on Kenshi 2, which will have exciting new features, new content and world to explore and mechanics to play with, rather than remaking kenshi 1, which would be essentially the same game."

You can leave a comment here and vote in this poll if you've got a preference. The original is, despite being a bit rough, already great, so it seems like Lo-Fi's energy would be better spent on making the sequel—but maybe you think differently. 

Kenshi took developer Lo-Fi Games around 12 years to create, and it finally left Early Access in December. It's great—just give our Kenshi review a read—and more than a bit weird. And a follow-up to the massive post-apocalyptic sandbox is already in development. 

The Kenshi 2 announcement was made without much fanfare, hidden away in the Steam updates and announcements forum (cheers, ResetEra). Lo-Fi was planning on working in peace without the pressure that comes from announcing a new game, but pressure from another direction made the developer reconsider.

"Our original plan was to keep the new project quiet so we could work on it without public pressure and then do a big press release when we had something to show," studio founder Chris Hunt explains. "However it seems lots of people are getting confused or angry about us not still tinkering with Kenshi or leaving the world of Kenshi behind, so I'm going to go ahead and announce early what we are working on now, as I think it will put most people at ease."

Kenshi 2 will be set before the first game, a whole 1,000 years earlier, letting Lo-Fi dig into the world's history. This is when the Old Empire was apparently top dog. That's the ancient civilisation whose ruins you'll find scattered around Kenshi, so presumably we'll be taking a trip back to before the apocalypse. 

It will use the same engine as the first game, though it's being upgraded for performance. The upgrade will benefit the original Kenshi, too, as it will be applied as a free update. Other features could also be shared across the games. 

"Why keep the same engine? Because a completely new engine would break everything and take another million years to finish," says Hunt. "By sticking with the same code we are making the decision to prioritise gameplay instead of graphics. (Not to mention a much faster release date)."

What that release date will be is still a mystery. Probably sooner than 2030, though. 

Kenshi, which first appeared on Steam Early Access way back in 2013, is as a peculiar and ambitious RPG. It is, at times, an RTS, a squad management game, a trading RPG and several other things, depending on the life you decide to lead in the massive sandbox. It’s leaving Early Access on December 6, 12 years after work initially began. 

It reminds me a lot of one of the greatest sandboxes and one of the best RPGs on PC, Mount & Blade: Warband. It’s got that mixture of roleplay, strategy and management, and stumbling around in the dark, utterly clueless, is just as much fun. 

Wanting to take it for a spin before it was properly let out into the wilderness, I made a character who really encapsulated me, but if I was stuck in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Meet Jim Dimly, a chubby, slightly cowardly wanderer.

Jim’s not got much going for him. In fact, all he has are a scruffy pair of trousers and a small amount of cash. Oh, and a stick. But what else does one need? I start out exploring a ruined town, but finding nothing worth pinching, I leave, heading towards a point of interest on my map. 

It’s a bar, but not just any bar! This bar, which doesn’t seem to have a name, also has a rather striking outdoor feature: a pile of bloody corpses.

The corpses, it turns out, are the victims of the bar’s bouncers; they’re all rather tough and well-armed. I spend my meagre funds on a giant barrel of water—I am in the desert, after all—and a crap crossbow. When I’m leaving, however, I wander right into a massive pack of bandits. They want my food, but I don’t have any, so I can only assume they plan on eating me. I run back to the bouncers and the pile of corpses gets bigger. 

As I wander off into the vast sandy void, my mind returns to the bandits. Wouldn’t it be nice, I think to myself, if I had some friends to explore with, instead of going it alone. I started again. Kenshi lets you pick from a multitude of starts, ranging in difficulty and what you’ll be doing. You can, for instance, start out as a well-prepared group protecting a base, turning it into more of an RTS. I opted for a simple group of penniless travellers.

The Rust Boys are a band of junk robots and their mate, a small human called Bland. I could have also included muscular ants and a weird purple monsters. The future’s a wild place. We start in the ruined town again but this time ignore the bar and head straight to the nearest city, narrowly avoiding some nasty looking predators on the way. We’ve got no money or resources, so hopefully the town will have some work for us. The dream is to eventually build a lovely wee community where everyone, human, robot, ant and whatever those purple dudes are, can live happily alongside one another. 

The town’s guards attack us immediately. 

Unfortunately, the town belongs to religious group that despises robots. I couldn’t have picked a worse place to visit. After a brief battle, everyone is unconscious. All the robots are just left to rust where they fall, but Bland, our human friend, is put in jail. They like him more. We’re not dead, though! Given enough time, the whole squad can reboot. Every time the guards see movement, however, they attack again. It’s going to be up to Bland to save the day. Once he’s finished his sentence, anyway. 

I have no idea how I’m going to get out of my predicament, or if it’s going to be possible for Bland to somehow mount a rescue, but I’m very much looking forward to finding out.