Kenshi

Create your own story in a brutal, uncaring world

- Andy Kelly

Nobody cares about you. You aren’t special. You don’t matter. You are not the centre of the universe. I’m not used to games telling me this, but this is Kenshi’s whole thing. It’s an RPG set in a brutal world that doesn’t give a damn whether you live or die, and there’s something strangely compelling about that concept.

“You are not great and powerful”, says developer Lo-fiGames. “You don’t have more ‘hit points’ than everyone else.” A bold stance for a genre where you’re often cast as an all-powerful hero. But it’s also an exciting one, because RPGs are some of the tropiest games around.

Kenshi has been in development for almost a decade. The first video of the game in action was posted on Lo-Fi’s YouTube channel in 2008, but it’s nearing a full release after arriving on Steam Early Access in 2013. It’s a hugely ambitious game, taking place in a hand-crafted world that adds up to 870 square kilometres of space.