A solitary figure sprinted barefoot across the swamp of The Gut. Skinny, shaven-headed, and dressed in rags, this was unmistakably a slave of the United Cities. They were fleeing from the nearby gated farm and the United Cities didn’t let their property go easily. Some way behind, two guards tore across the marsh, gaining very quickly on the underfed worker.

Up until about a week previous, the slave, named Fox, had been living a perfectly pleasant life as a wandering trader, ferrying goods between the major cities of the great desert with her faithful pack bull, Atlas. Unfortunately for her, she refused a demand from one of the nobles of Sho Battai to kiss his boot, committing a grave crime in an empire where the nobility do exactly as they please. Set upon by samurai guardsmen, Fox was savagely beaten and hauled to the local jail, and her loyal bull companion was butchered when he attempted to come to her aid.

After sitting in a cell for several days, strange men filed in and began to do business with the guard. Money changed hands. Before Fox knew it, she and several other prisoners had been sold. It took several back-breaking days on the farm, and tense nights learning how to pick the locks on her chains, but eventually, the unlucky trader-turned-slave was able to make a break for freedom. A break that looked like it was about to come to a swift and painful end.

There was, however, one thing in Fox’s favour. The things that lived in the swamp. They broke the treeline, at least five of them, huge and heavy-footed with giraffe-like necks that would graze the top of most buildings, but these were not herbivores. The sharp, beak-like faces were made for tearing meat. Fox ran. The guards fought. The screaming and crunching followed the fleeing prisoner some way up the hill. By the time those apex predators, the Beak Things, had left, there wasn’t much left of the guards. Their batons and some stained clothing, all of which Fox picked up and put on. It might at least keep people from realising she was marked as the UC’s property. Besides, she had a long way to go to reach her goal. To find that noble and make him pay.

This was one of the starts of my playthroughs of Lo-fi Games’ open-world strategy RPG Kenshi. Fox’s actions were determined by me, but everything that happened inside the world was wholly unscripted. It was genuinely gripping and utterly unexpected!

Kenshi is an interesting project. A six-year labour of love created almost wholly by one developer. It’s indie in the truest sense of the world and has a take on the genre.

Kenshi is an RPG in the purest sense of the term, where no story has been written for you, and your only forward motivation is what you decide your characters will do. The setting itself is there and the world has been well-developed. There’s a strange, barren samurai-themed apocalypse world out there to explore. There are many factions with their own laws and motivations. There are powerful enemies to be fought, named NPCs to be recruited, and lots to be learned about the lands and their inhabitants. That setting is, however, a living world that is not waiting for a hero. Like my first attempt at the game, your protagonist bleeds to death in a ditch half an hour into their adventure, the world will carry on just as it did before. 

For some people, of course, this might be a deathly boring prospect. No plot, no epic storyline to discover, no external motivation, only a big, wide, fundamentally indifferent world and a nobody with a sword. Maybe several nobodies with swords, or a nobody with a sword and a dog if you’re feeling spicy. Nearly any character starts off incredibly weak and improves by doing. Starting out you feel terribly powerless, but the world stretches before you and is full of possibility!

For the kind of people who love to dive into the essence of the genre and simply play a character, this is an amazing opportunity to just run off and see where the interactions with the world take you! While a defined narrative is often exactly what one wants in a gaming experience, it is restrictive by its nature. At the back of your mind, you know that the Tarnished must reforge the Elden Ring, the Dragonborn must defeat Alduin, a hero has to meet their destiny no matter how long they spend on other things. Kenshi’s lack of a particular push leaves you free to choose if your protagonists want to kill the Emperor, free all the slaves of the Holy Nation, hunt criminals for bounties, become drug kingpins, or just start a small bakery on the edge of the Stenn Desert.

Of course, stories are nothing without twists, and the world provides that. Various powerful factions control territory within the world. They have their own laws, values, and things that will make them turn violent, something Fox found out to her cost. Bands from certain sections of the population roam around as well, some being helpful, such as Hiver Caravans, and some being intent on eating people. It’s a wide range.

These unexpected interactions can make or break an expedition and turn a story you thought might go one way on its head, especially as any fight can have a lasting impact. If a character is injured and unattended for too long, they may die and will stay dead. They can lose limbs and be left unable to walk or use certain actions until it is replaced with a prosthetic, something that certain factions, in turn, take against. Even with the best first aiders, it is easy for a group to be left struggling far from safety, with members unable to walk. Quickly you go from a story about chasing a bounty, to a story about making hard survival choices, as there are not enough walking wounded to carry those left comatose or missing limbs. So the narrative abruptly changes.

Stories do, of course, need characters. Kenshi has those in abundance, both named NPCs that can be hired, and randomly generated villagers who you can get on board and promote to glory. Progression is a huge part of the process. As mentioned earlier, you improve stats by doing.

This may be healing people to improve first aid, running to improve athletics, or getting beaten up to improve toughness. Getting better is a slow process, and the game is certainly not for people looking for a quick dopamine rush. Initial failure, fleeing, and scraping by that feels like it continues forever gradually gives way to small victories, then big ones. Character models start showing six-pack abs. Fighting characters feel like protagonists who had trained hard for their success. It’s easy to get attached to these little wastelanders and their advancement as they jog through the desert, chatting and quipping with one another about whether certain monsters are real and how much they want some sake.

It makes the loss of a long-time squad member devastating and makes staging a prison break in the Holy Nation’s largest mine seem like a completely sensible idea. You care because of the investment you put into bringing these characters to the point of skilled heroes. It’s an extremely clever way of getting you caught up in their fates in a game where they might never be elaborated on.

Of course, Kenshi is not a perfect game. Its sprawling nature is far from seamless, having to forcefully pause to load in areas frequently, really requires a few mods to make the textures load in a semi sensible time. It’s no graphical marvel and sometimes you do have to do some troubleshooting yourself and reset party positions when they load in stuck. A sequel is underway, as well as a potential remake of the original, both moving to the Unreal Engine, which may address some of the issues, but even in its imperfect form, it is a staggering achievement for a self-published near-solo project. It is a game I have come back to, time and time again, and will continue to do whenever I want to find a whole new story.

Kenshi is available for PC via Steam and GOG.