Kenshi’s whole deal is best summed up with one of its game start conditions: “rock bottom.” When you start at rock bottom, you begin the game stranded in the desert, surrounded on all sides by enemies, with a 1 in all stats. Oh, and you just lost your left arm, and you’re malnourished in a territory where starving is illegal. This is a game that sold three million copies.
That sales figure was revealed today in a blog post from developer Lo-Fi Games. “To everyone who’s ever pointed a friend toward Kenshi, posted a screenshot, or clocked more hours than they’d care to admit,” the post reads. “Thank you.”
Kenshi is coming up on a decade since its full release as it left early access in 2018, but it’s remarkably active for a game of its tenure. It’s got over 5,000 concurrent players online as I write this, according to SteamDB—that’s around half of its all-time record on the platform, which it only just reached last year. I guess people just crave brutality—a mod that adds crucifixion has a 5-star rating on Kenshi’s workshop page.
Players’ continued enthusiasm has clearly been heard by the developers, who used the recent blog post to address the community’s “most common question”: what about Kenshi 2? Well, if you’re sick of hearing anything about Kenshi that doesn’t end in a sequel reveal, Lo-Fi has just the website for you—kenshi2when.com, which is like any other newsletter sign-up except for the fact that you can opt out of everything that isn’t explicitly about Kenshi 2.
Kenshi had a long, five-year journey in early access before its 2018 release, so it’s hard to guess at when a sequel reveal will actually happen. But it will almost certainly happen: While Kenshi is a little too cruel for my sensitive palate, fantasy sandboxes of its complexity and depth are few and far between, so it tracks that fans are so voracious. If you want to see what all the fuss is about, the original is on sale on Steam for $8.39 until June 1.
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