Encased Updates, $70,887 and Counting

With 15 days left to go, Dark Crystal Games’ Kickstarter campaign for their Fallout-inspired RPG Encased is currently sitting at $70,887 pledged, roughly $30,000 away from its initial goal. And if you’re still not exactly sure what this game is or how it looks like, the latest update shares roughly 20 minutes of pre-alpha footage that focuses on the game’s narrative. Check it out:

The other recent updates cover the campaign’s social goals, its first stretch goal, and the game’s vehicle design. You can check those out at your leisure, but here are the text parts from the meaty narrative update:

Hello from Dark Crystal Games! We’re live with a new update, and we’re glad you’re here. Today we’ll be talking about how the narrative for Encased is intertwined with role-playing mechanics, and how player choices dramatically affect both the story and the gameplay.

As you already know, you’ll be playing as an employee of CRONUS, masters of the Dome. You’ll be asked to choose your Wing – the part of the company you’re joining. Your choice will dramatically affect your experience of the world inside the Dome.

Black Wing. Military, security, special forces, and police, providing security and keeping the police under the Dome.

White Wing. Scientists, researchers, and medical personnel. Your job is to study the amazing technology of the Dome – for the good of mankind, yes, but mostly for corporate profit.

Blue Wing. Mechanics, computer scientists, engineers, builders. Blue Wing employees build and maintain company infrastructure.

Silver Wing. Directors, managers, and financiers. You and those around – and above – you run the corporation under the Dome.

Orange Wing. Unskilled labor, recruited from the world’s prisons. The lowest of the low.

Choosing your wing at character creation is one of the main parameters determining how you experience the world under the Dome. Blue and White are the working elites, respected from the beginning. Orange employees arrive in handcuffs, under the watchful gaze of the suspicious Black and Silver authorities. Each Wing and the characteristics and skills that they bring bestow limitations… and bonuses.

The choice of Wing affects the unique choices available to you – not just in dialog, but in the way your adventures unfold. The engineer sees the Dome as a mechanism, to be broken down to find out how it works. The scientist may see it as a mystery of unknown origins, to be solved that it may divulge its secrets. The soldier sees a threat to be met – and looks forward to the fight. The director sees a resource to be exploited, and profit to be made. And to the ex-prisoner in the orange jumpsuit, the Dome is a step up from Hell, where survival is everything.

One obvious effect of your choice of Wing is your level of access: Blue employees can walk into technical areas, Whites into laboratories, and Blacks into command posts and armories. Each Wing employee also has different skillsets – for example, a Blue Wing engineer or a technically savvy Orange will be able to hack a terminal and avoid registering at the reception desk on arrival at the Dome. This can be useful.

On top of the customization available at character creation through the choice of Wing, we’ve also added an option to create the character’s back-story. At times, the hero will remember who they were in their lives before the Dome, and that choice will open unique game situations, dialog options, and even NPC reactions as the character reacts to learning the truth about your past. Who knows, perhaps your crazed colleague, on discovering that you were a surgeon, will stab you to see if you can save yourself. Or maybe that rebellious Orange with the big gun will change their mind about shooting you because their mum always wanted them to marry a doctor.

Inspired by classic old-school RPGs, Encased gives you extensive options – and your choices will have real consequences. Which is exactly how it should be. Using the available skillsets, attribute values and starting bonuses of your chosen Wing, along with the choices you make along the way, Encased lets you choose your own unique experience of the world under the Dome and its stories.

Welcome to Encased. Welcome to the Dome. Welcome to your adventure.