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- Jan 28, 2011
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Tags: Copper Dreams; Whalenought Studios
It feels like the Copper Dreams alpha has been perpetually a week away for the last six months. According to the new Kickstarter update, Joe and Hannah intended to release it last weekend but were distracted by their work on the beta (which consists of the game's main campaign rather than a limited test scenario). In the meantime, they've continued to refine the visual style and have implemented a host of interface quality-of-life improvements, which you can see in the update's accompanying video:
Joe and Hannah also have some interesting ideas about how to handle player death. They'd like the game to work a bit like a roguelike, with an autosave slot that updates after every non-combat action, so if your party gets wiped you can return to the moment just before the battle started. However, at least in some cases there will also be an option to keep on playing, with your party whisked off to the local clinic by robots, imprisoned by the authorities, or finding themselves in other, more unusual predicaments. I quote:
Play it Out
We wanted to design something around the concept of what we do when players might be incapacitated in a tabletop game and the DM doesn't want to make everyone re-roll. There are some fun narratives that can occur that we wanted to explore as a part of normal gameplay, and thought that was worth experimenting with for the main campaign. As the nature of the previous option, choosing to Play it Out saves immediately after, so when they are available it can be more or less of a gamble given the situation/location.
1. Clinic
Your agent in the alpha and main campaign have wicked good health insurance, thanks to your plum job. Playing it Out in a location that isn't heavily fortified or a dungeon lets your HealthInsurance Body-Bots come find you and fly you off to the nearest clinic location. The randomized city is divided up into blocks, and with a few exceptions every one of those has a clinic, so you'll never be far from where you fell.
At the clinic, a half-day passes (! this important for events), and you can choose to stay longer and heal or get back to it. Clinics are automated and will automatically bill you, or if you fail to have the funds bill your Syndicate which will keep a tab on you and make you pay for lunch.
2. Jail
If you fell due to or near by MFI, the city overlords, you'll be tossed into a procedural jail. Like the clinic, every city block usually has an (otherwise inaccessible) jail attached, and depending on your method of breakout you'll be outputted back into the block you were at. These jail maps are relatively small, isolation cubes for the city riff-raff, but will always have your equipment stored in an office that you'll want to loot before leaving. Maybe you can steal other inmates stuff!
3. Event
These can be a gamble for a session. Events occur when you fall in an atypical location, like surrounded by cyber-mutants, in a Syndicate compound, in a sewer system with monsters, or other unfortunate places. Syndicates will throw you in the sewer drain which will put you in a different location, maybe to get help after, or maybe some other problems. At worst you might come out of these situations with a permanent disfiguration or ailment before a Body-Bot finds you, maybe mutants spread a mutation to you before throwing you out, or maybe you have a limb eaten off before you're found.
On the flip side there are potentially rewards and secrets to be found. Those sewer drains might throw you out into an otherwise inaccessible location where you are healed and able to discover cyber-quests, treasure, or other secrets. Some mutants are friendly and you could be rescued with augmented with beneficial mutations.
Right now the plan is to announce a new release date for the Copper Dreams alpha by the end of the week. The update will apparently be released "shortly thereafter" alongside a new trailer, so I guess it's not far off. Then again, we've heard that before.
It feels like the Copper Dreams alpha has been perpetually a week away for the last six months. According to the new Kickstarter update, Joe and Hannah intended to release it last weekend but were distracted by their work on the beta (which consists of the game's main campaign rather than a limited test scenario). In the meantime, they've continued to refine the visual style and have implemented a host of interface quality-of-life improvements, which you can see in the update's accompanying video:
Joe and Hannah also have some interesting ideas about how to handle player death. They'd like the game to work a bit like a roguelike, with an autosave slot that updates after every non-combat action, so if your party gets wiped you can return to the moment just before the battle started. However, at least in some cases there will also be an option to keep on playing, with your party whisked off to the local clinic by robots, imprisoned by the authorities, or finding themselves in other, more unusual predicaments. I quote:
Play it Out
We wanted to design something around the concept of what we do when players might be incapacitated in a tabletop game and the DM doesn't want to make everyone re-roll. There are some fun narratives that can occur that we wanted to explore as a part of normal gameplay, and thought that was worth experimenting with for the main campaign. As the nature of the previous option, choosing to Play it Out saves immediately after, so when they are available it can be more or less of a gamble given the situation/location.
1. Clinic
Your agent in the alpha and main campaign have wicked good health insurance, thanks to your plum job. Playing it Out in a location that isn't heavily fortified or a dungeon lets your HealthInsurance Body-Bots come find you and fly you off to the nearest clinic location. The randomized city is divided up into blocks, and with a few exceptions every one of those has a clinic, so you'll never be far from where you fell.
At the clinic, a half-day passes (! this important for events), and you can choose to stay longer and heal or get back to it. Clinics are automated and will automatically bill you, or if you fail to have the funds bill your Syndicate which will keep a tab on you and make you pay for lunch.
2. Jail
If you fell due to or near by MFI, the city overlords, you'll be tossed into a procedural jail. Like the clinic, every city block usually has an (otherwise inaccessible) jail attached, and depending on your method of breakout you'll be outputted back into the block you were at. These jail maps are relatively small, isolation cubes for the city riff-raff, but will always have your equipment stored in an office that you'll want to loot before leaving. Maybe you can steal other inmates stuff!
3. Event
These can be a gamble for a session. Events occur when you fall in an atypical location, like surrounded by cyber-mutants, in a Syndicate compound, in a sewer system with monsters, or other unfortunate places. Syndicates will throw you in the sewer drain which will put you in a different location, maybe to get help after, or maybe some other problems. At worst you might come out of these situations with a permanent disfiguration or ailment before a Body-Bot finds you, maybe mutants spread a mutation to you before throwing you out, or maybe you have a limb eaten off before you're found.
On the flip side there are potentially rewards and secrets to be found. Those sewer drains might throw you out into an otherwise inaccessible location where you are healed and able to discover cyber-quests, treasure, or other secrets. Some mutants are friendly and you could be rescued with augmented with beneficial mutations.
