Encased - Dev Update, Release Sales

Dark Crystal Games posted an update about the game features and what to expect next. Encased is now on sales (-20%) until September 14th on Steam and GOG.

Encased is out

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 this 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 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.

[...]

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!

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More information.

I know, I know... two newsbits the same day

But hey, if you haven't bought it yet, you have some time to read the reviews to decide and still buy it at -20%, so it was worth it.

steam Online now:1,138
shiiiet, pathfinder had around 45k

porcozaur said:

steam Online now:1,138
shiiiet, pathfinder had around 45k

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Bigger brand name and following. Pathfinders more popular.

I had hoped how smoothly it had updated the EA version I could continue where I was lol. Too optimistic as when I went to load Lobo's save (aye I play him in multiple games) there are none available.

So have to restart. At least I as only 11.7 hours into the EA version before I stopped knowing the official was really close.

A few quick things I noticed in the official version:

Not only voice overs but the narration of everything. That lasted all of 5 minutes until i went under sound options and set volume to 0 Narration was tied to voice overs in sound so had to disable both. No loss though as I am fine not having any voice overs, especially in a game like this.

They had custom portraits and indicated they would be in the official release but they don't so far. Searches show there was some ability but no clear directions on where or how except one comment - with a follow up one that indicated it didn't work. Their portraits need some work. Hopefully custom will be a thing later.

Provided proper camera rotation options ... but at the cost of not being able to map the ARROW keys to WASD. You could in BETA! This is a pain for me as I always map to the right side of the keyboard and use the arrow keys in pretty much all games. Hope they resolve this.

Otherwise it is running great and got my character remade and under the Dome

I like indie releases. How does Encased compare to Black Geyser (rpg mechanics, classes, story, atmosphere, and dare to say PC performance since both are in Unity!)?

wolfgrimdark said:

Not only voice overs but the narration of everything. That lasted all of 5 minutes until i went under sound options and set volume to 0 Narration was tied to voice overs in sound so had to disable both. No loss though as I am fine not having any voice overs, especially in a game like this.

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What exactly was it that you didn't like? Was it just how loud it was?

JDR13 said:

What exactly was it that you didn't like? Was it just how loud it was?

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No, not volume, I couldn't stand the narrators voice for one. That is rare as I tend to be forgiving on voice overs. This one ... grated on my nerves big time.

Second it was breaking the immersion, not adding to it. I don't mind the rare narrative - like when the game changes from one chapter to the next and a narrator explains a bit of what happened.

This narrator was reading everything. It was super distracting to me, especially since I didn't like the voice.

The general voice overs of characters I could put up with (although they weren't great IMO) but they are tied to the narration from what I saw. There is also volume for "events and dialogue" and thought maybe that was the narrator but turning that to 0 volume didn't stop the narrator, only the VO did.

wolfgrimdark said:

This narrator was reading everything.

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Yeah, I can see how that would get annoying fast. It wasn't like that in the EA version back when I played it. I hope they change it to where the narration and VO can be controlled separately.

But But you NEED narration for the young folks who can't read......

Sorry can't help being a smart ass old curmudgeon

JDR13 said:

Yeah, I can see how that would get annoying fast. It wasn't like that in the EA version back when I played it. I hope they change it to where the narration and VO can be controlled separately.

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They have said that they are going to do this.

A lot of games interweave descriptive text with dialogue, and if you only voice the dialogue (like Pillars of Eternity did, and Wrath of the Righteous does) you end up hearing all of the dialogue and only afterwards reading the in-between text, which is kinda weird. It's like if you were reading a book and you skipped around to all the dialogue and only went back and read the other bits when you got to the end of a paragraph.

So some games are doing the narrate everything thing now. Disco Elysium did this, as did Pillars 2. I don't mind the guy's voice, but his line readings are up and down, and while it's nice to have longer passages narrated, it's distracting to have him reading things like "she said" and whatnot.

I'm going to roll with it and probably advance the the text quite often before the speaker is finished, especially when it's him.

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Just loaded the game up and played for 10 minutes.

Personally, I like the narrator, including his voice. I think he has a good voice for a sci-fi type game, and he does inflect emotion at times, but sure, its subtle.

Regarding the Black Geyser comparison, I would say this game easily wins in that comparison. That is based on me playing a demo of Black Geyser and playing this game for a couple hours in the beta, but this game I instantly fell in love with.

I think I might like it more than Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous to be honest, of course its based on very early impression (of both games), but this game just has so many things I like, such as the graphics, the theme, the character system, turn-based combat, the music (the music fits the game's atmosphere to a "tee"!), the story, it has all the ingredients that I like in classic rpgs.
And just the overall style and atmosphere appeals to me quite a bit as well.

I'm also talking aesthetics such as the colors they used in the interface, how the interface looks, how the UI works in practice, how the game looks in general, what the pace of the game seems to be, how much freedom do you feel in the game, all that kind of stuff.

Arkadia7 said:

Regarding the Black Geyser comparison, I would say this game easily wins in that comparison. That is based on me playing a demo of Black Geyser and playing this game for a couple hours in the beta, but this game I instantly fell in love with.

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Yeah, I don't think it's even close. Not that Black Geyser is terrible or anything, but it's got a very generic feel to it and didn't grab me at all.

I knew this was going to be good even when I played a very early version of it.

Yeah, but Encased is turn-based from the start and built for adventure. Pathfinder is very much like a Baldur's Gatey crowds slashing and hacking at each other in colossal pandemonium with a questionable story.

mercy said:

Yeah, but Encased is turn-based from the start and built for adventure. Pathfinder is very much like a Baldur's Gatey crowds slashing and hacking at each other in colossal pandemonium with a questionable story.

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Huh? Both are very similar.

Both have an adventure-oriented story but it's much lighter for Encased than Pathfinder: WotR due to the size of the team and the fact the latter is based on an Adventure Path & Pathfinder, so it benefits from an enormous background.

There are combats in WotR, but the exploration, main story and the companions' take a huge part. And there is nothing questionable about the story.

Both had turn-based mode from the start.

You may not like the setting, but that's something entirely different.

I said I would play a couple of hours of Encased and then return to Pathfinder and finish it first... But I'm changing my mind.

Almost 30 hours in Pathfinder WotR and I was introduced to the crusade mechanics and I confess that it cooled down my enthusiasm for the game. I don't know if it can be disabled and what I might miss out if I do it... But I don't like the crusade gameplay (I love HoM&M, but this is way worse, uninstering and just adds busy work).

Encased managed to engage me again and I think I'll give it priority now.

Gwendo said:

I said I would play a couple of hours of Encased and then return to Pathfinder and finish it first… But I'm changing my mind.

Almost 30 hours in Pathfinder WotR and I was introduced to the crusade mechanics and I confess that it cooled down my enthusiasm for the game. I don't know if it can be disabled and what I might miss out if I do it… But I don't like the crusade gameplay (I love HoM&M, but this is way worse, uninstering and just adds busy work).

Encased managed to engage me again and I think I'll give it priority now.

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It's easy to get lured into Encased

It is possible to avoid the crusade system with an auto mode, but for now this option is not stable so it's not safe to use it yet. And it's not possible to change back once the auto mode is chosen.

If this part of the game is really not your cup of tea, wait for this feature to be fixed. I hope they'll tune it though, so that it's more enjoyable for everyone.