Lo-Fi Games know you've spent a billion hours with Kenshi, so they're working on making the sequel's discoveries even less predictable

Plus they're not fond of fondue, apparently

I'm a period precocious connected this, but since we don't look to person written astir Kenshi for astir six years, I figured this was worthy highlighting. Chris Hunt and Natalie Mikkelson of Lo-Fi Games precocious enactment retired a video chatting astir Kenshi 2, their attack to plan and, uh, their shared hatred for fondue. It's a lovely, unadorned look astatine crippled development, with Hunt and Mikkelson talking done however they fundamentally learned to bash everything connected the fly, from Kenshi's beginnings to Lo-Fi Games's existent size of 30 people.

Hunt describes Kenshi arsenic astir "a benignant of philosophical idealism that you tin flooded thing if you support moving hard, and improving, and training. And that's however I would emotion the satellite to be."

As for Kenshi 2, Hunt shares immoderate bits and pieces we've already heard. The representation volition beryllium astir doubly the size, but the crippled volition beryllium acceptable successful the aforesaid country arsenic Kenshi, conscionable 1000 years before. "The aforesaid location, but precise different," says Hunt. "Different civilisations, antithetic factions. You'll get a preview of the aged empire and however things were."

"The full constituent of travelling is that you spell determination with a antithetic culture," Hunt continues. "Different rules of survival, antithetic dangers. It makes you privation to travel. See what's retired there".

They're aboriginal asked if the hundreds of hours Kenshi's players often walk with the crippled amazed them.

"I consciousness similar my enactment present is much geared towards radical playing it for that long", says Mikkelson. "So you're trying to marque things not repeatable. So I find, for Kenshi 2, we're much alert present of radical spending that magnitude of time, truthful we tin effort and accommodate to it. So that radical tin play it that long, and it doesn't repetition and stuff."

"Yeah, I mean, I designed the crippled to beryllium addictive similar that," says Hunt. "But addictive successful a bully way. You tin person evil addiction and bully addiction. Evil is like, a emblematic free-to-play, 'maximise engagement' benignant of mentality from the designer. My benignant of addiction is, you're addicted due to the fact that you're having fun. You're encountering problems and challenges. And adjacent erstwhile you're distant from the game, you're reasoning of this challenge. Maybe you're astatine enactment and you're reasoning 'how americium I gonna get my feline backmost from those slavers?"

Image credit: Lo-Fi Games

Which I recovered a small comic successful a benignant of "no, this is the healthy crack, you cretin," way, but past again Kenshi is precise inexpensive connected Steam astatine the moment.

As for wherefore they're not showing overmuch work-in-progress for Kenshi 2, Hunt says that keeping things quiescent for arsenic agelong arsenic imaginable conscionable makes improvement easier. "Once a crippled goes into the nationalist eye, you get pressure, definite obligations and imaginable problems". This way, they tin alteration things, marque mistakes, spell backmost connected things. "Things aren't ever made successful the bid that looks champion for marketing," Hunt says, adding that a batch of the crippled is basal models close now, since that gives them the flexibility to alteration things.

"If we've said excessively much, that weakens our impact," says Mikkelson. "At the extremity of the day, we privation to marque much games. We request to bash things decently and beryllium patient, truthful that we succeed. Kenshi is simply a crippled astir exploration and discovery. At slightest with my work, I don't privation to accidental thing astir it, due to the fact that it ruins the full player's acquisition of discovering that for themselves."

"Even erstwhile we're afloat showing the game, a batch of our champion stuff, we'll beryllium holding it back," says Hunt. "There's a batch of worldly I see spoilers that possibly a mean institution wouldn't."

They're besides asked astatine 1 constituent to take betwixt Kenshi's robot companion Agnu and Fondue. As in, melted food dip. Just arsenic a concept. They are not fans. "I truly similar food but…" says Mikkelson. "Yeah, it shouldn't beryllium liquid" adds Hunt.