Encased - Joining Koch Media

The devs of Encased have announced that they now have a publisher (Koch Media) which means that the game will now be fully voice acted.

Encased is joining Koch Media



From the very first day of development, Encased was a completely independent project, funded by our own money and the incredible support on Kickstarter. After receiving many offers we are fortunate enough to be able to cooperate with Koch Media. This partnership will secure the best possible publishing partner support from the whole Koch Media group while guaranteeing us the complete creative freedom to design the game we want and promised to you. We will put all our combined efforts behind the goal to make Encased a unique and truly amazing gaming experience on PlayStation 4, Xbox One as well as PC.

Koch Media will publish Encased within one of its labels. We will share more news on this subject at a later date. For now, the important information for you, our fans and backers is simply, we Dark Crystal Games will maintain full creative freedom and receive the necessary resources to make Encased even better, more interesting and friendly for players. The Koch Media family will support us not only with the group's full publishing power but sharing insights on global development and releases.

Thanks to the support of Koch Media each character under the Dome will get its own voice -- the game will get a full professional voice over, including the environment, dialogues and story inserts. We will be able to work even more carefully on each and every corner of the world, expand game mechanics and available game content. We will translate Encased into additional languages and the full version of Encased will be released simultaneously on PC and consoles! Unfortunately, we will need extra time to add all this to the game. But we are absolutely sure that the end result will not disappoint you.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us since the very first concept art. See you soon under the Dome!

[…]

Thanks Carnifex!

More information.

Ah yes the were sorry but we need we need more time excuse. Look I'm happy for them but every time a kickstarter game finds a publisher it always comes with an delay.

For reference it's really THQ Nordic as they own Koch Media. Which is now labeled as Embracer Group AB which used to be Nordic Games Publishing AB and THQ Nordic AB

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
For reference it's really THQ Nordic as they own Koch Media. Which is now labeled as Embracer Group AB which used to be Nordic Games Publishing AB and THQ Nordic AB

It's true what they say about corporate structures, not even labyrinths are this convoluted.

Originally Posted by Silver
It's true what they say about corporate structures, not even labyrinths are this convoluted.

Yep the main reason was consumers couldn't tell the difference between each branch. As they had two THQ Nordic labels at one point. I don't see how hey it's Corpo.

Funny, I thought they already had a publisher, Black Tower Entertainment.

This article also states that BTE would be a spin-off from DCG (do you also understand the same?), but I couldn't find any confirmation:

In 2018 Dark Crystal Games launched a successful Kickstarter campaign that funded the development of the game and raised its production level. The project was promoted and developed by publisher Black Tower, which evolved from Dark Crystal Games’ marketing department. Encased launched in early access in 2019 and has received positive feedback from players. Development is ongoing.

I've not really dug deeper, perhaps one of you know more about that?
Labyrinths indeed

Anyway, this game really looks interesting!

BTE is based in Russia and they are the publisher (a publisher? the first publisher?)

At least they do keep the backers informed, which is far more than I could remark about some other past ventures. I don't claim to have any special knowledge of how many organizations that they may be affiliated with, though. All I know is the game looks like something I'd enjoy, and I'm hopeful we'll all get to sample it sometime soonish.

Perhaps a superficial criticism, but… "Encased" is a bad name, in my opinion. It sounds weird, at least to a native English speaker such as myself. Not going to pass judgement on the game itself based on this, but it really sounds weird to have a game called Encased.

(Though I am sick to death of post apocalyptic game worlds.)

It is an odd name, to be sure. Might make a tad more sense if you were tromping around in a mech suit or something . But it takes more than a quirky name to frighten me away from what might be a worthwhile game!

Haha, yes, I was wondering about the name too, it was probably lost in translation

Originally Posted by Carnifex
It is an odd name, to be sure. Might make a tad more sense if you were tromping around in a mech suit or something . But it takes more than a quirky name to frighten me away from what might be a worthwhile game!

I think it refers to being in a vault once the apocalypse went down.

Eh the name makes sense as you are living in a giant dome city. So you see in essence you are encased in that Dome. So by that logic the name makes perfect sense.

Link - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/encase

To me that's pretty cool news. If they have more time for polishing now and also add voice acting on top, then go for it.

Also from my impression Koch Media is also a rather non-intrusive publisher and I think they often make deals just to bring out physical games in Germany and maybe other regions.

This makes Koch Media somewhat "arbitrary" which for us gamers is probably a good thing. I don't think you would ever think about "a Koch Media Game".
Some of the games they published:
Metro Exodus
Wasteland 3
Saints Row 4
Risen 2
Gothic 3
Sacred 1,2
Tropico 6
Pathfinder Kingmaker
…

Koch Media AKA THQ Nordic is also the one who postponed the steam version of
Metro Exodus after taking pre-orders only to launch as an Epic exclusive instead.

Hopefully they don't pull that shit again with this game. Also some of those games are published by Deep Silver who is a division of Koch Media owned by Embracer Group AB.

So many damn divisions and sub-divisions of that company.

Ohhh that was a nasty piece of business, to be sure. I'll also hope that those shenanigans are not repeated, and, if they are, I'll have my pitchfork ready for battle.

I played the EA last year and liked it quite a bit. I hear the game is significantly different now as a lot of content has been added since then.

Kind of disappointed about the decision to go with full voice acting here. I don't see how it adds much to a game like this except to extend development time and resources.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Kind of disappointed about the decision to go with full voice acting here. I don't see how it adds much to a game like this except to extend development time and resources.

Agreed. I understand the fact you need voice acting for a broader market appeal, but I don't think it will help this game in this aspect because its too niche. Those resources could have been better spent elsewhere.

Ah yes, this Epic exclusive was badly received. Encased isn't in the same category, it's even DRM-free (at least on GOG), I don't expect such exclusivity (and DRM) problem to happen.

This is sitting in my Steam library. It's interesting, kind of reminds me of a cross somehow of the old "Paranoia" tabletop game and a Fallout game - you're in a vault, people are color-coded according to job/status, there's a lot of secrecy and randomness going on. It looks like it has the potential to be quite good, and I hope that having a publisher behind them makes the experience even better.

Originally Posted by FurtiveNyctophile
This is sitting in my Steam library. It's interesting, kind of reminds me of a cross somehow of the old "Paranoia" tabletop game and a Fallout game - you're in a vault, people are color-coded according to job/status, there's a lot of secrecy and randomness going on. It looks like it has the potential to be quite good, and I hope that having a publisher behind them makes the experience even better.

There was an RPG released this year for the "Paranoia" tabletop game. Unfortunately it was garbage and turned out to be terrible. Hardly see anyone talk about it anymore.

Encased is more like Fallout with various factions in the destroyed world.