KickStarter Mechajammer (formerly Copper Dreams) - cyberpunk RPG from Whalenought Studios

[hello friend]

"Mechajammer"?

WTF??

I thought the benders who changed the awesome title of "No Truce for the Furies" to "Disco Elysium" were bad, but "Copper Dreams" to "Mechajammer" is just as fucking cringe.

What fucking retards. They're game can go fuck itself.

*Their're

 

[Infinitron]

 

[cyborgboy95]

New screenshot titled "Creeps!"

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Hopeful. Always hopeful.

 

[Zombra]

Set Skeleton at 27!

Press Z to ask permission to use the restroom!

Press X to drop dead!

Press L to ... okay, that's probably stealth.

Who knows what the hell those other buttons even are.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Press L to ... okay, that's probably stealth.

C.

 

[LESS T_T]

It's... coming? They've got a publisher, Modern Wolf, one behind Ostranauts.

 

[Infinitron]

So that's the announcement they teased in the Kickstarter update.

 

[Abu Antar]

Damn, it even has a playable demo.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

 

[Infinitron]

Heh they haven't actually showed it on the stream yet:

A tactical cyberpunk turn-based RPG set on an off-world grindhouse jungle colony. Skulk through the shadows or charge in guns blazing. Recruit a unique party for large squad-based assaults as your adventure plunges you deep into the city’s secrets.

Mechajammer is developed by Whalenought Studios and published by Modern Wolf.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/mechajam...mersive-sim-rpg-inspired-by-80s-action-films/

Mechajammer is an isometric immersive sim-RPG inspired by '80s action films
A world-exclusive trailer for the indie cyberpunk RPG debuted today at the PC Gaming Show.

In early 2016, we got our first look at a "cyberpunk, cybertactical party-based cRPG" called Copper Dreams. A couple of months after that, it completed a successful $40,000 Kickstarter campaign. The project looked very promising, but the Kickstarter's estimated release target of May 2017 proved hopelessly optimistic, and at that point it fell off our radar. Development continued, though, including a name change in mid-2020 to Mechajammer, and today at the PC Gaming Show we saw how far it's come courtesy of a world-exclusive premiere of a brand new trailer.

At first glance, Mechajammer bears a passing resemblance to the original Fallout games. But Hannah Williams, co-founder of developer Whalenough Studios, said that it draws more heavily from the great action/sci-fi films of the 1980s, like Escape From New York, Robocop, and The Terminator.

"There's something wonderfully gritty, dark and campy about the way the future is portrayed in these films that really resonates with us," Williams explained. "These low tech worlds are both awful and relatable at the same time, and while Mechjammer is more of a sci-fi setting, the world itself is analog and familiar. We love creating dense, abstract visual atmosphere in our games, and we wanted to channel that lack of CGI used in these kinds of sci-fi films. The environments are a dense wall of grungy, sweaty pixels, and we think it captures the grungy feel of movies like these."

Interestingly, while Mechajammer has a lot in common with "tabletop-rooted CRPGs" like Fallout, Williams said that its basic foundation is more of an immersive sim, "like an isometric Deus Ex." That approach to the game's design led Whalenough to try making combat more simulation-like as well, with actions playing out simultaneously over multiple turns.

"Because actions are nuanced throughout multiple turns and lose the usual turn-based abstraction, the result has more real time tactics, but with the control of traditional turn-based combat," Williams explained. "You see an enemy pop up from taking cover and is pointing a pistol at you, but they haven't shot yet, so you can assume they are in an aiming turn for the moment. You could choose to duck behind your own cover and wait, run for different cover to flank, take a shot yourself if you think you'll be faster, or throw up your shield to deflect."

"It makes combat tense and allows for a variety of tactics like side-stepping a thrown knife (which takes turns to get to you) or interrupting someone mid-attack that wouldn't be possible if everyone took their turns one at a time or all at the exact same time."

And if fighting isn't your thing, Mechajammer also readily supports stealthy play with enemy sight cones, audio detection, cover, and non-lethal takedowns, so conflict avoidance is a perfectly viable option as well.

Your ultimate goal in Mechajammer is not to save the world or the people, but simply to survive and escape, which Williams said is another element of the game that draws from those '80s action classics.

"In Mechajammer, there aren't any hero subquests of saving dogs in a well or helping people," Williams said. "Like Snake Plissken, you just want to escape your own chains and claw your way out of the hellhole you've found yourself in, even if you leave the city in worse shape than you found it. Despite this, the campiness and satire in these movies give them a lighter tone, chandeliers bolted to cars, single hand combat with a giant with a spiked club, etc, and we love the contrast that the bleakness of everyday life and the ridiculousness of the camp bring to the genre."

Yeah, I'm definitely interested in this one. Mechajammer is currently "coming soon," and will be available on Steam. For now, you can find out more at mechajammer.com.

 

[ADL]

I didn't even recognize this when they showed it. This looks great.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/3217836

E3 & Steam & Demo

Hello!

Hope everyone is safe and healthy. Our Steam page is up! With a demo! This is the intro-dungeon of the game, acting as your brief exposition before getting to the city and playing with some of the systems.

We'll also be sending [all] backer tiers the build alpha/beta backers currently have, which will continue to be updated with the remaining game for testing, so be sure to download that one when we send them out if you eventually want to be testing all of it, it would be great to put as many of you through the grinder as possible when we're ready. We will make an announcement when we send those out.

Alpha/beta backers, your current build will turn into this demo tomorrow, and then we'll be expanding that into more of the game in short order for you to check out and then proceed with new stuff.

E3

We were just on PC Gamer’s e3 show which is wild, and are working with some wonderful folks at Modern Wolf to bring the game to every human laborer on earth and the offworld colonies. They’ve been incredibly kind and a joy to collaborate with.

Here's nice interview we had with PC Gamer!

There are a few channels opening to talk about the game, and if you have any suggestions, feedback or ideas that you’d like to talk to us directly about, as always, just fire it up on the newest forum topic we’ve setup for you on the site (let us know if you want some help with your sign-in), there’s a demo topic up now! Or email us. Or come visit, we’re vaccinated and chilling in chicago. Or sometimes we yell at the clouds on twitter.

Current Feedback Notes:

• Aiming turns

The aim menu got a bit more love. We talked about it in brief here. It wasn't too fun to navigate in that toggle mode we came up with, and instead designed something more passive. Holding shift, you can rotate your character sprite and visualize their perception cone, and whatever tiles or targets land in the cone will be able to have an aim modifier applied to it (or dodge or block, but those are different actions). If you want to start attaching an aim mod to your next attack, just tap the skip-turn button as much as you want until it maxes out. You can do this in preparation of attacks, or get a quick advantage in combat until a gap is closed. If you attack a target outside that established vision cone, or if you rotate again, any aim buff is lost. Functionality is quite similar to something intuitive like aiming in Deus Ex, but with turns.

• Roll info

While flipping through actions a menu now displays dice roll percentage ranges for whichever action you’re doing, time in turns it will take, and which Study it comes from. It needs to update and adapt depending on where you are hovering around the screen for light/darkness/height modifiers and everything in-between that can influence a roll.

• Driving

Driving will have a turn-based mode during any combat scenarios, which the demo avoids in any case. Physics are a little wacky atm and will get updated, but cars are mainly for getting around the open world quickly, and combat will still have this option. This will allow you to just click a destination point within your sight radius and start moving the car in a single direction, allowing you to move quickly or ram into enemies, while leaving right-click open for attack rolls. Companions in the vehicle will start attacking as they can with melee or range, which they currently do.

Talking Heads

We just finished a walkthrough video of some of the demo, and will post that soon. We’ll be saving you the trouble of an hour long video of us blabbering, so we’ll be editing it down in some off time over the next week or so. It’s mainly focused on system design and gameplay you can mess around with in the demo, so if you find the whys and hows interesting it should be informative, or something to fall asleep to.

We also started organizing the ruleset-guide on all the rolls, items, stats and wounds. We’re doing it in a way that will also allow it to be accessed from within the game, too. This will be convenient if you’d like to reference something and nice for us if things change, it’s pulling from the same rules that the game uses for rolls and checks so updated are automatic. This will be the digital equivalent of the one we print for some of those rewards, just minus some pretty art.

Thank you all, the game couldn’t have gotten here without your support.

Stay safe, cheers!

Hannah & Joe

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

 

[buffalo bill]

It's... coming? They've got a publisher, Modern Wolf, one behind Ostranauts.

First video shows subtle square tile indicators at one point, hexes at another point, and no indicators (during vehicle sections) at another point. Second video shows no tile indicators during vehicle gameplay.

The vehicle gameplay that I've experienced in the beta absolutely sucks. It is real-time action garbage. The devs do not seem to be keen on integrating vehicular gameplay into the otherwise tactical non-vehicular gameplay. Maybe they are enamored by action-y vehicle combat for some reason. Regardless, if this remains, and vehicles are a big part of the game, I'm gonna skip on playing the final release. I really cannot overstress how bad vehicle gameplay has been in the beta iterations that I have played.

Driving will have a turn-based mode during any combat scenarios, which the demo avoids in any case.

I'll believe it when I see it.

However, the current beta is hexes, and overall it is pretty nice.

 

[grimace]

• Driving

Driving will have a turn-based mode during any combat scenarios, which the demo avoids in any case. Physics are a little wacky atm and will get updated, but cars are mainly for getting around the open world quickly, and combat will still have this option. This will allow you to just click a destination point within your sight radius and start moving the car in a single direction, allowing you to move quickly or ram into enemies, while leaving right-click open for attack rolls. Companions in the vehicle will start attacking as they can with melee or range, which they currently do.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/3217836

 

[buffalo bill]

• Driving

Driving will have a turn-based mode during any combat scenarios, which the demo avoids in any case. Physics are a little wacky atm and will get updated, but cars are mainly for getting around the open world quickly, and combat will still have this option. This will allow you to just click a destination point within your sight radius and start moving the car in a single direction, allowing you to move quickly or ram into enemies, while leaving right-click open for attack rolls. Companions in the vehicle will start attacking as they can with melee or range, which they currently do.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/3217836

I quoted this in my post

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I don't know if I am to be disappointed or relieved at the lack of an artstyle change with the announcement.

 

[ArchAngel]

Is this the final form of the art design or will we get something new next week?

 

[T.Ashpool]

did they completly change the visuals? it looks so much better now, i acutally put this on my wishlist

 

[Abu Antar]

did they completly change the visuals? it looks so much better now, i acutally put this on my wishlist

Only like 1500 times.

 

[Sotomonte]

How is it possible that a digital character is not binary? ... is there something more than 0 and 1 in its code? maybe some 2?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

How is it possible that a digital character is not binary? ... is there something more than 0 and 1 in its code? maybe some 2?

Probably Analog, I mean, look at all that rust.

 

[Jenkem]

to be honest with how often they changed their appearance and think superficial aspects are the most defining aspect of their game we should have figured tranny shit was coming