Posted September 07, 2021
We are beyond thrilled to make this announcement. Today, Encased, the game to which we have dedicated more than three years of our lives, will be released out of early access. It's hard for us to contain our excitement and describe how important that moment is.
We’ve been through the Kickstarter campaign, two years of early access, five content patches, millions of hours of early access playtime, hundreds of characters, quests, abilities, and items.
Ahead of us is a leap of faith into the final stage of the most desperate adventure of our lives!
Do you remember how it all started?
In 2017 a very small team of developers decided to create their own game. An RPG with enormous freedom of choice, nearly infinite variability, hundreds of characters, and a real influence of player’s choices on the world and the story. We knew from the start that we had a long, challenging, but incredibly exciting road ahead of us. And as we developed, it only became more and more difficult.
Now we are working with a major publisher Prime Matter, but we are still the same independent studio, burning with the idea to create games of our dreams. Our numbers have grown from only a few employees to dozens of people, and the duration of a single full playthrough is around 40 hours!
Get ready for adventures and more
During the two years of Early Access, many of you have already played dozens of hours in Early Access. The game has already received five content patches that added new mechanics, locations, and characters to the game.
Today, you will uncover the entire world under the Dome, a full story campaign, an updated interface, and dozens of endings that will be influenced by your own decisions. And today we're going to tell you about some of the features we're most proud of!
Encased encourages the most sophisticated ways of playing through the game and is ready for your most extraordinary deeds and decisions. Many, even seemingly insignificant steps of your character will affect the world, story and ending.
Tactical turn-based combat
We're diehard fans of old-school RPGs, so we chose to stick with turn-based battles, where winning is not a matter of clicking your mouse fast enough, but of tactics and strategy. The game mechanics have been changing throughout the early access, and our game designers invested a lot of effort into the combat system and balance.
Encased now features 14 skill trees, over 250 passive and active abilities, 70 perks, and 17 character traits. We did the math and found that at least 40 unique builds are available to players.
Unique playthroughs
Remember we promised you that only you can decide how to play the game? World under the Dome gives you maximum freedom of choice.
Create a character with low intelligence and unlock completely unique dialogues and character reactions, coupled with unconventional ways to die or complete the quest against all odds.
And if you don't want to talk to anyone, you can hide from others using stealth, strike your enemies from the shadows and go through the whole story as a lone wolf.
Unleash your darkest fantasies and start destroying and killing every living thing under the Dome from the very first seconds of the game. Engage in every fight and mercilessly kill every employee of the CRONUS corporation, the game is even ready for a psychopath like you.
Believe the best of people? Take on the role of an ardent pacifist, use only non-lethal methods of eliminating opponents and go through the game without spilling a drop of blood. The world under the Dome will remember every action you take.
And these are just a few of your future playthrough options. Immerse yourself in the world under the Dome and play your chosen role to the very end!
Fully voiced main quest with multiple actors
Each key character of the world under the Dome is voiced by a professional actor in both English and Russian. Now the adventures have become much more atmospheric, and the characters are fully individualized.
Weapon upgrades, crafting, and survival systems
We did not strive to create a wasteland survival simulator, but rather a believable living world where in order to stay alive you have to eat, sleep, find or create weapons, try on servoshell armor that protects against many dangers, but is not able to fit through a small manhole or a gap in the fence. Each location and quest can be completed in a variety of ways, and it's up to you to decide which one to use.
Hundreds of characters, companions and factions
The world under the Dome has a rich life of its own even without your involvement. Here you will meet interesting characters that can either become your best friends or your worst enemies. Militant factions will try to get you on their side, but whoever's right and wrong is for you to decide. Heroes and dubious characters alike are ready to join your squad. Each of them has their own view on what is going on, as well as their own attitude towards your actions. It's likely that you'll disagree with some of them while others may become your most loyal friends. These people —and not only such— will stand by your character’s side until the end and will possibly play an important role in the game's finale.
A Story that you can and will shape
From the start Encased has been a game about how people’s courage, wisdom, and hard work can rebuild a decadent civilization from the ashes. But as we all know, not everyone wants to follow the hero's path. We’ve created the story in a way so that the world reacts to every decision you make, and instead of a thriving world in the finale you may see smoking ruins of cities, or a totalitarian empire growing under the Dome, or a state ruled by technocrats, or...
There truly are many endings to Encased, and we want each of you to experience the story that resonates with you.
We created Encased together with you
All the things we mentioned above would remain a dream without the support of our community. We often talk about how players have influenced the creation and development of Encased - and these are not mere words. Every bug report, Steam and GOG review, social media comment, game feedback and message you send us directly impacts how we develop the project.
The Kickstarter campaign was not the starting point of Encased. Even prior to that we came up with the basic concept of the project, put together the first technical preview, created the concept of Wings and the basis of the universe where humanity discovered the gigantic anomalous Dome. But it wasn't until the campaign began that we realized how many people were willing to support our dream. We realized that our players needed Encased!
We sincerely thank the 2,938 Kickstarter backers, the people who believed in us at the earliest stage of development. Pre-orders and every copy sold in early access only strengthened that feeling. The thought of your trust kept us going even in our darkest moments.
What’s next?
Encased has exceeded our expectations. It has a lot more content, mechanics, characters, and points of interest than we intended to make at the beginning of development. Now it's a whole world that lives by its own laws and rules. Tomorrow, when you run the full version of the game for the first time, it may have bugs and flaws. Right now we're getting ready to receive your messages, to address each and every one of them as fast as we can, and to fix, edit, and improve all the available content!
You can support us with feedback, send us a bug report, write to us on any social media platforms that will continue to be filled with content. And we will continue to improve the world under the Dome to make your adventures even more exciting.
As soon as the game is released, we'll start creating previously unannounced content that will keep you coming back to the world under the Dome!
We’ve been through the Kickstarter campaign, two years of early access, five content patches, millions of hours of early access playtime, hundreds of characters, quests, abilities, and items.
Ahead of us is a leap of faith into the final stage of the most desperate adventure of our lives!
Do you remember how it all started?
In 2017 a very small team of developers decided to create their own game. An RPG with enormous freedom of choice, nearly infinite variability, hundreds of characters, and a real influence of player’s choices on the world and the story. We knew from the start that we had a long, challenging, but incredibly exciting road ahead of us. And as we developed, it only became more and more difficult.
Now we are working with a major publisher Prime Matter, but we are still the same independent studio, burning with the idea to create games of our dreams. Our numbers have grown from only a few employees to dozens of people, and the duration of a single full playthrough is around 40 hours!
Get ready for adventures and more
During the two years of Early Access, many of you have already played dozens of hours in Early Access. The game has already received five content patches that added new mechanics, locations, and characters to the game.
Today, you will uncover the entire world under the Dome, a full story campaign, an updated interface, and dozens of endings that will be influenced by your own decisions. And today we're going to tell you about some of the features we're most proud of!
Encased encourages the most sophisticated ways of playing through the game and is ready for your most extraordinary deeds and decisions. Many, even seemingly insignificant steps of your character will affect the world, story and ending.
Tactical turn-based combat
We're diehard fans of old-school RPGs, so we chose to stick with turn-based battles, where winning is not a matter of clicking your mouse fast enough, but of tactics and strategy. The game mechanics have been changing throughout the early access, and our game designers invested a lot of effort into the combat system and balance.
Encased now features 14 skill trees, over 250 passive and active abilities, 70 perks, and 17 character traits. We did the math and found that at least 40 unique builds are available to players.
Unique playthroughs
Remember we promised you that only you can decide how to play the game? World under the Dome gives you maximum freedom of choice.
Create a character with low intelligence and unlock completely unique dialogues and character reactions, coupled with unconventional ways to die or complete the quest against all odds.
And if you don't want to talk to anyone, you can hide from others using stealth, strike your enemies from the shadows and go through the whole story as a lone wolf.
Unleash your darkest fantasies and start destroying and killing every living thing under the Dome from the very first seconds of the game. Engage in every fight and mercilessly kill every employee of the CRONUS corporation, the game is even ready for a psychopath like you.
Believe the best of people? Take on the role of an ardent pacifist, use only non-lethal methods of eliminating opponents and go through the game without spilling a drop of blood. The world under the Dome will remember every action you take.
And these are just a few of your future playthrough options. Immerse yourself in the world under the Dome and play your chosen role to the very end!
Fully voiced main quest with multiple actors
Each key character of the world under the Dome is voiced by a professional actor in both English and Russian. Now the adventures have become much more atmospheric, and the characters are fully individualized.
Weapon upgrades, crafting, and survival systems
We did not strive to create a wasteland survival simulator, but rather a believable living world where in order to stay alive you have to eat, sleep, find or create weapons, try on servoshell armor that protects against many dangers, but is not able to fit through a small manhole or a gap in the fence. Each location and quest can be completed in a variety of ways, and it's up to you to decide which one to use.
Hundreds of characters, companions and factions
The world under the Dome has a rich life of its own even without your involvement. Here you will meet interesting characters that can either become your best friends or your worst enemies. Militant factions will try to get you on their side, but whoever's right and wrong is for you to decide. Heroes and dubious characters alike are ready to join your squad. Each of them has their own view on what is going on, as well as their own attitude towards your actions. It's likely that you'll disagree with some of them while others may become your most loyal friends. These people —and not only such— will stand by your character’s side until the end and will possibly play an important role in the game's finale.
A Story that you can and will shape
From the start Encased has been a game about how people’s courage, wisdom, and hard work can rebuild a decadent civilization from the ashes. But as we all know, not everyone wants to follow the hero's path. We’ve created the story in a way so that the world reacts to every decision you make, and instead of a thriving world in the finale you may see smoking ruins of cities, or a totalitarian empire growing under the Dome, or a state ruled by technocrats, or...
There truly are many endings to Encased, and we want each of you to experience the story that resonates with you.
We created Encased together with you
All the things we mentioned above would remain a dream without the support of our community. We often talk about how players have influenced the creation and development of Encased - and these are not mere words. Every bug report, Steam and GOG review, social media comment, game feedback and message you send us directly impacts how we develop the project.
The Kickstarter campaign was not the starting point of Encased. Even prior to that we came up with the basic concept of the project, put together the first technical preview, created the concept of Wings and the basis of the universe where humanity discovered the gigantic anomalous Dome. But it wasn't until the campaign began that we realized how many people were willing to support our dream. We realized that our players needed Encased!
We sincerely thank the 2,938 Kickstarter backers, the people who believed in us at the earliest stage of development. Pre-orders and every copy sold in early access only strengthened that feeling. The thought of your trust kept us going even in our darkest moments.
What’s next?
Encased has exceeded our expectations. It has a lot more content, mechanics, characters, and points of interest than we intended to make at the beginning of development. Now it's a whole world that lives by its own laws and rules. Tomorrow, when you run the full version of the game for the first time, it may have bugs and flaws. Right now we're getting ready to receive your messages, to address each and every one of them as fast as we can, and to fix, edit, and improve all the available content!
You can support us with feedback, send us a bug report, write to us on any social media platforms that will continue to be filled with content. And we will continue to improve the world under the Dome to make your adventures even more exciting.
As soon as the game is released, we'll start creating previously unannounced content that will keep you coming back to the world under the Dome!
Post edited September 07, 2021 by CronusHQ
