KickStarter Encased - isometric post-apocalyptic RPG under the dome

[Safav Hamon]

 

[StaticSpine]

Talked to Vyacheslav on DevGamm.

Early Access launch is planned for the end of May/first days of June.

I also asked about the length of the final game. Bros are aiming at 30 hours walkthrough.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Translated using google

How the creators of Encased try to rethink the classic RPG
DTF.RU
May 20, 2018


The first details about the new “Russian Fallout” with developer comments.


After STALKER, it seemed that domestic developers no longer need to create their Fallout. The GSC game perfectly reflected the Slavic post-apocalypse, and it seemed that the isometry had already gone out of fashion by that time. But in recent years, Wasteland 2 and Obsidian games have once again brought back faith in old-format RPGs. What is not a reason to revive the old dream?

I saw such a dream in the game Encased from the newly formed Petersburg studio Dark Crystal Games. At the DevGAMM Moscow 2018 conference, I was able to see an early version of the project and talk with the team leader, Vyacheslav Kozikhin.

Encased - role-playing game of old school with turn-based battles, and this is captivating. In addition, the authors draw a unique world in which a nuclear war did not lead to a catastrophe typical of the genre.


Unusual post-apocalypse

In the remote desert part of the world find a strange Dome with a complex of buildings inside. For the sake of his study, people form a special corporation "Kronos". After years of research, it turns out that the object was built by some unknown civilization, which was well ahead of human development, - it was called the Forefathers. You can also enter the Dome, but you cannot exit it.

Nevertheless, adventurers continue to record in the expedition to touch the unknown artifacts. A player is sent to one of these expeditions.

From the very beginning everything goes wrong. A group of five people fights back from the main squadron, leaves the elevator in the depth of the complex and loses touch with the rest. There they find a new entity - artificial intelligence, which controls the Dome. AI takes people for enemies and starts the cleaning process. From the artifacts of the Forefathers a vortex of psychotic energy is pulled out and the Dome fills it. Communication with the outside world is lost, and the player falls into stasis for several years. After awakening, he will have to find out what happened and correct the situation.

We do not have a classic catastrophe for the genre like the unfortunate ended Caribbean crisis. Banal atomic postapocalypse was not originally interesting to us. Rockets are mentioned here and there, but these are events in the background that do not belong to the main plot.

The key gameplay and narrative feature of the game is to interact with the psychotic storm. He puts pressure on people, and if you do not defend against him, then you can go crazy. The pressure of the storm increases closer to the center of the Dome - namely, the hero needs to get there. The character’s abilities will also be tied to psychotic energy, but the developers are still silent about them.

How not to "screw up" the created character

One of the tasks that Dark Crystal Games have set themselves is to make the distribution of character characteristics at the beginning of the game clear.

We are very tired of the "bungled" builds in the RPG. Although a player with a lot of experience in old school role-playing games, he understands perfectly well what strength, endurance, charisma, and similar parameters mean, he doesn’t know how these characteristics will be useful to him in this game.


It also annoys the authors themselves when they try to test how errors work through stealth, find out what the benefits of theft are, what penalties are from them and how the combat system works. After all, because of this, it is often necessary to re-create the hero in the first hour. Well, or you have to suffer most of the game with a class that you don’t really like. The studio wants to avoid such situations.

In Encased, the player first, in semi-interactive form, creates the base character and defines it in one of five divisions - scientists, engineers, soldiers, prisoners or leaders. Then he is credited with abilities that are logically suitable for the class. In the prologue, they are introduced into history and are given a chance to familiarize themselves with the role-playing system, and upon its completion they allow the characteristics to be redistributed as desired.

The game has five classes of characters, and each class is a separate registered character. They all take part in the plot: choosing one as a hero, you will surely cross with the rest during the game. So, one of the tasks of a scientist is to investigate the artifact of the Forefathers, but by playing as an engineer we can help him with this matter.

The team pays great attention to the meta-development around the game. They make brochures like the manuals for the first Fallout, though not forty pages, as was the case with Interplay. Also, the authors have created a website where you can answer a few questions and describe the character's biography. According to the results, the system will generate a hero, and the top five promise to add the game as an NPC.

Another task that developers have set for themselves is to rework or implement classical mechanics for the genre at a decent level. It is worth staying in more detail.

The variability in solving problems was shown to me in a simple-looking example: you need to open the door to the repository of the Forefathers. With the passage of a soldier class, I counted four options. You can find a flimsy wall and undermine it, find the portal and enter it at your own risk, get the key from the criminal or cover it until he opens the door himself. If you select an engineer at the beginning of the game, he will understand the situation at all simply by digging in the terminal at the door. Total for all classes will be about 10-12 ways to solve this particular problem.

Combat system
The most important difference from the same Fallout is that our mechanics are much less tied to clicks with the left mouse button, from which the chance of hitting, healing and success in other actions gradually increases.Vyacheslav

According to Vyacheslav Kozikhin, Encased is better than other RPGs of the old school in that here the character will have much more abilities - you do not have to “call out” enemies with the same trick. The player will have the opportunity to choose from two or more active or passive skills. Let's say, it's not easy to press a button and disappear if you're lucky, but to throw a smoke grenade and hide in smoke.

And also, over time, the character gets better and better to wield one or another weapon, as in Skyrim.

Shootout taken from the real world. The more often you shoot a particular rifle, the better you do it. Vasily Zaitsev [the Soviet sniper] with one “three-line” for good reason passed the whole war. After all, with time you marry with weapons.

Crime system

In the game there will be an indicator of wanted. Depending on the tricks of the hero, he is awarded a rating on a five-point scale. At the fourth level, the whole faction is chasing you, and at the fifth level - the entire population of the Dome.

Some mischief overlooked over time. You can escape from the city, then return in a week, and your petty theft will be forgotten. But in order to atone for serious sins, you will have to waste about two years - and at this time events in the world will continue to evolve.

Penalties depend on the faction in which the player screwed up. The civilized faction will arrange an indicative court, as a result of which the player is most likely executed. But at the same time there will be opportunities for the organization of escape. A less civilized organization will throw a player into the maze of death at an "iron test". Survive means innocent.

Realism

Will be in Encased and elements of survival like Kingdom Come. The main characteristic here is fatigue. The character spends energy: it can be replenished as just sleeping, and energy. One way or another, the hero will not last more than three days without sleep. On the third day, he will simply fall unconscious where he was and turn off for a few hours. If this happens in the fields or city, then a random event will likely happen to the player. At best, he is robbed.

70s style

In action and in the screenshots, the game still resembles a classic post-apocalypse, but this is not yet its final form. Encased events unfold in the seventies - it is then that the Dome is discovered and an alternative history begins. The original era is inspired by local style.

I once asked our artist: "Andrew, why such a strange helmet?" And he replied: "I adore the traffic lights of the 70s, they have very funny visors."Vyacheslav Kozikhingame designer Dark Crystal Games

Dark Crystal Games is a new indie studio from St. Petersburg. Now it consists of fifteen employees, but there are plans for the release to expand to twenty. Moreover, the authors are far from newcomers, as is usually the case with “our Fallouts”.

The studio, and the game itself, began with one person - Vyacheslav Kozikhin. This is his first project as a manager. He began with work in the St. Petersburg branch of Larian, worked on the Divinity: Original Sin dilogy as a game designer. While working on the second part, he led a team of four people.

Despite the fact that the studio is young, it consists of experienced people. The Technical Director has worked on Life is Feudal: Forest Village. The second artist - on the series Mass Effect and Dragon Age 2. The art director even before Wasteland 2 made the prototype of his isometric turn-based RPG.

We have gained the most experienced people in key positions. All others have released at least one project with a focus on a single and a cool story.Vyacheslav Kozikhingame designer Dark Crystal Games
Encased has been actively developed for six months, and in early 2019 it is planned to release the game in early access. As sources of inspiration, the authors, in addition to Fallout, also call Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment, while trying to rethink old-format RPGs.

Yes, there are many promises and ambitions, but so far they show little. But after talking with Vyacheslav Kozikhin, I got the impression that Dark Crystal Games clearly formulated the tasks for the near future: how to develop the project and at what stage to hire new employees. We hope everything will work out.

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Infinitron]

Some gameplay footage here:

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I really dislike the dialogue screen tbh. I get it, it's fallout-inspired indie RPG #3027, but be a bit less on the nose about it and come up with some unique designs.

 

[agris]

that dialogue screen looks almost nothing like the fallout dialogue screen. unless you mean skeuomorphic with a list of serif-fonted options?

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[RickOmbo]

dialogue screen looks almost nothing like the fallout dialogue screen. unless you mean skeuomorphic with a list of serif-fonted options?

That barter button though.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

I really don't get the total obsession Russians have with Fallout. But if good games come out of that, all the better, they can have my $$$.

 

[Van-d-all]

that dialogue screen looks almost nothing like the fallout dialogue screen. unless you mean skeuomorphic with a list of serif-fonted options?

Yeah they changed the color palette, unlike say, Atom RPG. Not that I care either way, as long as the game is good.

 

[StaticSpine]

I really don't get the total obsession Russians have with Fallout. But if good games come out of that, all the better, they can have my $$$.

We are born and we die with only one desire - to make our own Fallout

 

[Saduj]

I really don't get the total obsession Russians have with Fallout.

Collapse of Soviet empire + Chernobyl + it is an awesome game.

 

[Circuit the Short]

I really don't get the total obsession Russians have with Fallout.

It's the best depiction of post-soviet countries ever done in a videogame.

 

[toro]

I really don't get the total obsession Russians have with Fallout. But if good games come out of that, all the better, they can have my $$$.

Your mind cannot handle the truth.

 

[Jrpgfan]

I really don't get the total obsession Russians have with Fallout. But if good games come out of that, all the better, they can have my $$$.

It reminds them of home.

 

[Lady_Error]

The isometric view has a kind of weird angle, but other than that it looks promising.

 

[vortex]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Jenkem]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...-school-isometic-turn-based-rpg/posts/2555285

Kickstarter Update #33: Closed Alpha release and Early Access delay

“The Dome and its environs were not built in one day, and the work is far from being over. Of course, mistakes in the design and construction of buildings are made, accidents occur, Oranges die... Why am I saying this? Oh yes. The community under the Dome is a living organism, it needs time to grow and strengthen. ”


The Dark Crystal Games team that never leaves its office is once again with you, and we have some news.

The first one: we are forced to postpone the early access game release (we’ll tell you a bit later why).

The second one: we are releasing a restricted access version of the game for alpha backers on Steam. And if you are an alpha backer, then perhaps the access key for the alpha version is making it to your email inbox right now, and the alpha build itself is being uploaded to Steam!

We are well aware that delays suck, but sometimes they are necessary, and here’s why.

***

“Early access” almost always means that a game feels raw, unstable and poor in terms of content. We do not want to see Encased like this even at this stage of development, and unfortunately we have to choose between the earlier release and the quality. We choose quality.

Encased is a game with a rich atmosphere and a deep, developed world. And nothing kills all this like stuttering, crashes and bugs.

Sure there will be some bugs in the Early Access version of Encased, but their numbers will be minimized, and they will not spoil your game experience. To deal with errors (small and large), we’ve introduced a special system: in every game version there’s an option to send a bug report or a suggestion to the developers: just click the button in the corner of the screen, describe the problem, and the system will automatically send us a screenshot and your text, adding your computer stats to the message (in certain situations this will help to diagnose the cause of the bug). This system will help to make the game better as quickly as possible and even, over time, implement some of your proposals.

Button in the form of an envelope in the upper left corner of the screen
Another equally significant reason for the delay is the constant work to improve the interface, polishing game mechanics, rewriting, writing and editing the text – trust us, Encased has a lot of text. From the very start of the development we’ve set ourselves a fairly high level of quality, and now we are trying to keep up to it with everything we have.

We want you to see the game as it is intended. This requires effort and time, resources a small team often lacks. We hope you understand and ready to wait a bit longer.

And for alpha backers we have an alpha version.

***

“Alpha”, that is coming out in the next couple of hours, is an unfinished version of the game. The content of the first official version of Encased is very limited, all that the game consists of, including graphic assets, render, role-playing system, sound, interface, plot, et c. is in the non-final state and will be finalized by release date.

The alpha version of Encased is not intended for public display and sale, and is distributed exclusively for kickstarter-backers. But what is waiting for you in this “alpha”? An early version of the character editor, several large locations and quests, a lot (really, a lot!) of loot. As well as the opportunity to fry a cockroach, climb into the ventilation, make a bat with nails and look at the gloomy sands of the Dome, covered with fog.

In fact, this closed alpha is the first official release for us as a team. And we, like you, want this game to be of high quality, interesting and exciting, and hope that the adventures under the Dome will be remembered by everyone who happened to get into it.

***

Aside from the delay, our plans remain the same: shortly after the alpha, we will release the beta, which will be available to a much larger number of players. After eliminating bugs and polishing the content, the long-awaited EA-version will be released.

We cannot announce the release date yet, but be sure that this will happen soon enough. The Spire accepts shipments, the White Wing examines relics, the team works, and Encased moves towards the early access.

 

[Infinitron]

Any alpha backers here?

I'm guessing the game won't be coming out this year.

 

[toro]

Any alpha backers here?

I'm guessing this game won't be coming out this year.

"Pledge €215 or more" for closed Alpha. Forget it.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I don't hold much contemp to crowdfunded games, as some of my favorite recent rpgs are crowdfunded (shadowrun, expeditions, kingmaker, atom, even deadfire)

still, one of the biggest scam in crowdfunding is paying more so you can QA test the game.

I don't understand why both devs and consumer do this. For devs, making it a paywall reduce the numbers of potential unpaid testers, and for buyers, you are literally paying for doing a tedious job that people paid for.

Paying more to support development or at the very least to receive other extra goodies is fine if you are into that, but beta testing? Noped

 

[Infinitron]

Oh hey, live alpha stream:



Too bad it's in Russian.

 

[toro]

I did not understand much (google auto-translate) but below are some remarks:
- minimalist UI with quest log and so on, (I love that UI ... please don't change it!)
- the attributes, skills and perks system is absolutely insane, (there is no way it will work unless some skills will be useless)
- quests with multiple endings, (the quest from the clip is about disabling the camera from a warehouse)
- skill checks in dialogues and not only, (use Criminal skill to put pressure on NPCs)
- grid inventory, (why is so fucking hard to implement this!?)
- no retarded QTE minigame for hacking, (no minigames in general)
- you can tag points of interest on the world map,
- you can scan each NPC for information and most objects in the world, (this seems to be a very important mechanic)
- reputation system with different factions, (unfinished)
- they cannot commit on modding, (they want to finish the game first)
- point-and-click actions interface, (once you click on an object then you get a popup with available actions like "Use Force" and so on),
- stealth is possible and there are cameras, (but it's not finished)
- if you use the mirror then you gain +1 Charisma for the next dialogue,
- you can gain a power armor early in the game and the armor will give skills boost, (I'm not sure what to think about this),
- you can research things (!?) or you scan things to earn research points (!?),
- CYOA interactive cut-scenes, (like in PoE and PK)
- crafting at workbenches,
- issues with combat animations because it's still Alpha,
- main quest is not time limited,
- each location has alternative/stealth paths (like ventilation or secret corridors) which allow the player to eavesdrop on some NPCs,
- skill books, unique weapons (with background), drugs (anti-radiation and I guess for skills boost)
- Stalker like interaction with anomalies (throw nails at them) ... and then scan them,
- NPCs have no schedule (I guess I'm asking for too much),
- he names system shock, deus ex, fallout, planescape torment and divinity original sin as inspirations (I don't see how torment or divinity influenced this but ...whatever).
Edit: The devs worked on the first Divinity Original Sin.

I love the artworks style and how the game looks. In fact this looks like an isometric combination between Fallout and Insomnia: The Ark ... which is actually awesome.

They failed to demo the combat but I guess that they are working on it (it's basically the only thing missing from the demo).

According to Kickstarter I'm backer 26 for this game but to be honest I've backed it out of desperation and I did not have great expectations for it.

However the demo looks better than I've expected. If the combat is half decent (or half as fun as in Underrail) then these guys will create a classic.

They have everything they need to make a great game. I want to believe.