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[More_Badass]

From the devs of the fantasy cRPG Serpent in the Staglands

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams
http://copper-dreams.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDsRs-r93As
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=682999664

Dumped onto the island world of Calitana, you are one of hundreds drafted to ease the overcrowding that is rapidly miring the citizens of Earth in famine, violence and poverty. Once a beacon of hope, the isolated Calitana quickly devolved from lustrous to disastrous, unable to support its settlers, and overrun with unbridled corruption and lawless syndicates.

From waterways to rooftops, adaptability on the island means scaling the city heights, be it to avoid syndicate eyes or to explore the depths and secrets within. An isometric, fully 3d world allows for vertical freedom and movement. Traverse through districts by vaulting through windows, grappling hook to decks above, or jumping building to building. There's no way off Calitana, but there are a myriad of ways through it.

Copper Dreams is set on an off-world island colony called Calitana. Owned by the US government, Calitana is one of many interstellar bases, although it is notoriously the least enjoyable to live in.

At the start of our story, the US government has been forcibly sending its citizens to these off-world colonies to free up overcrowding in cities. You play as one of these unlucky draftees, starting your adventure as your pod crashes into the shores of your new home.

Calitana lives up to its reputation, seeing little in supplies or surveillance from the US over the past few decades, giving free rein to the corporations and syndicates that amassed power in the absence of any official rule.

Though you begin your journey as an Agent of Asset Inquiries for one of the bustling corporations in the slums district, your responsibilities, especially your task of gathering intel and spying on your competitors, lead you to discover secrets and mysteries that go behind corporate warfare.

• An isometric, fully 3d world allows for vertical freedom and movement. Traverse through districts by vaulting through windows, grappling hook to decks above, or by jumping from building to building.
• Stagger the odds in your favor with good hardware. Ditch those fleshy limbs hanging off your joints, and instead rig in a harpoon or a chainsaw, coiled legs, built in wrist recoil, cloaking rigs, or a convenient mobile eye for scouting around corners and down hallways.
• While most RPGs pit you against a mosh pit of enemies in an open environment, Copper Dreams will give you ample opportunity to use height, distance, lighting and hazards to your advantage to get the upper hand with cyber-espionage.
• Engage enemies in strategic, turn-based combat with time-based resolution. Execution time for a turn's actions adds an extra tactical element to the classic turn-based system, and gauging when to attack, hide, intercept or engage in a full-party assault can turn the tide of battle in your favor.

===

Details gathered from updates and developer comments:

- An isometric 3d world, where every floor in every building can be seamlessly entered, from basement to rooftops
- Utilitarian black-market augmentations like chainsaw or harpoon arms, coiled legs, cloaking rigs, mobile scouting eyes
- Melee weapons and fully-customizable weapons, ranging from stocks and silencers to emp or incendiary rounds
- A deep complex stealth system that takes into account: line of sight and vision cones, noise, shadows, distance, height, crouching, cover, enemy patrols, distractions, hiding spots, last known position, alert levels, taking out lights and cameras, disabling/hacking security systems
- Turn-based combat with abstracted time (ie a thrown grenade takes time to travel its arc)
- Hands-off quest design revolving around intrigue and corporate espionage
- Day/night cycle and passage of time, which influences guard patrols, if you have time to rest, where a mission target will be, etc.
- A keyword-based dialogue system that dynamically creates queries based on information you know and items in your inventory
- Progression system that completely removes XP for actions, instead revolving around mission milestones, finding/buying better hardware, equipment, and cybernetics, and learning new skills from trainers
- A health system with no HP, instead using a combination of Lesser, Greater, and Mortal injuries (bullet graze, melted femur, pierced lung, etc.) that affect your stats, movement, and status of individual body parts

On the game's open world

The game is designed to be quite open world. The island city is separated into district maps you can enter at will, some run by other syndicates, and any building within one of these maps needs to follow the framework setup for all of them — to be enterable and scalable. There are some areas on the island that are disconnected from the city proper that you can explore as well. The districts themselves sort of act as hubs with their own NPCs, structures and areas of interest, though your primary one is Wolffz Bay.

The extended world we have planned (thanks to the kickstarter!) has a lot of content planned; you’ll be getting a dense, full RPG experience. While some districts are hostile to Syndicate operatives (opposing Syndicates), you can travel anywhere you want. Anything from robbing estates, mission locations in factories, to chatting up (or again, robbing) the slums in the central districts. Resting, menial jobs and training can be done during rests, similar to something like Darklands where you choose activities for your adventure group in towns.

On the action time bar

When a character hits the action bar, they do need to choose an action (or skip), though there's a few ways you could stall that. We have mini-actions setup right now to progress you through to execute, and then pop the character back up to action to do another turn. This happens for things like opening your bag or crouching/standing. The alternative to that is a half-time on the wait timeline so you'd get there faster, which largely works the same but is more consistent with trajectory on that bar. We're playing with what will work best, but same outcome on those.

On flanking and enemies

Enemies will certainly react to grenades they see being thrown nearby, so as long as it's their turn and they can move in time before they explode. Enemies only know of what player characters they can see, so flanking them is optimal.

On gameplay length and character creation

The length of the campaign is dependent on how this Kickstarter turns out, but you could ballpark a very content heavy 20 hours at minimum. During character creation you'll be able to chose your sex, your face, three background jobs that influence your virtues (stats) and skills, and put points into virtues.

On the gameplay and story structure

I would describe the game as heavy on exploration. You could think of it as a combination of replicating p&p-like combat and the different tools and ways you can interact with the world and environment in a point and click adventure game (which is also meant to give you that p&p freedom). There’s a story weaving through the game, and how you’ll be able to influence it is pretty open ended.

Our goal is to give you a hands-off experience to discover conspiracies and hidden agendas to influence your syndicate completely on your own, and give you a character that has the means of doing that. Event-based jobs give structure to the gameplay, but there is a larger game being played by the syndicates and how you discover and influence that is the real story.

On armor and wounds

Armor types change a character's appearance. Each potential party member you can get has a unique character model that changes with different armors. That said ,we have a very open ended inventory system that doesn't have slots and allows you to equip most items without limitations. Various smaller equipment won’t necessarily have appearance changes, or would be too small to have a visual.

As for wounds, your party members don't actually lose limbs, (unless they have a robotic arm that currently is unequipped), but enemy deaths will visualize that. If you've rolled a high ailment amount of damage, or crit, whatever body part is hit will be blown off visually, and we have character models with separated limbs just for that reason. That's two things to hide though! If your characters are heavily wounded we will have various slower walk/limping animations, as well ones for being overloaded with gear. This has character movement speed hindrances as well, of course.

On biohacking and telekinesis

You can train you character in Biohacking, which will allow you to mind control enemies during their turns and outside of combat.You'll also be able to put points in Mental Stability during character creation which will keep the same from happening to you, and increasing your will and mental fortitude. Telekinesis is something we've discussed and would be one of those additions we'd love to add in if the Kickstarter is successful! Mechanically it would work really well with our physics-based items.

On cybernetic augmentations

You'll be able to replace your legs, torso, arms, and head, so by the end you could be mostly machine! Your left arm can be completely removed and exchanged for devices like the harpoon. Replacement of a character's whole head is rare, and leads to some repercussions like loss of speech or other senses. Cranium additions like an eye or sonar or plating are more common.

On the "Copper Face" sentries of the Mayflower Initiative syndicate

Unfortunately for the guards chosen, their human brain (and head) are an unnecessary use of space for what the Mayflower Initiative purpose them for, and are much more optimized with it decapitated. This is highly expensive and cutting edge cybernetics — besides maybe Agro-Fax, the other syndicates can't come close to replicating this.

Replacing that is essentially a copper dome of sensors that relay to scout bots they keep in their inventory. These are deployed when they are searching for targets, and allows them to scout an entire area very quickly (unlike a normal guard who can only possess their own sight to determine target location).

While blind, Copper Faces have audio sensors and a primitive sonar reader, so they can still roughly detect targets without their bots but would be heavily crippled with their sensor dome fried.

Designing these guys were one of our early tests on how we could use stealth, environmental abilities, and NPC sensory AI to make for engaging, simulation based encounters with even just 1 enemy.

 

[More_Badass]

A ton of additional details from earlier in the year

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/copper-dreams-whalenought-studios-next-game.103709/

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...s-reveal-their-next-rpg-copper-dreams.103713/

It's isometric with a fixed perspective, the camera perspective is familiar to pretty much everyone. The character models are 2D though.

Modern Resolution (1080p+) graphics, 3D world with 2D characters. Isometric style camera with a fixed perspective. The art style will be stylized of course.

The game will be turn-based, but with simultaneous real-time resolution. It's slightly different from phase-based where everyone acts at the same time. It's this weird middle ground between turn-based, phase-based and real-time xD

Units will roll for initiative and be placed in a turn order, each turn will be separated by a discrete unit of time.

When the game comes to a player unit's turn, the game will stop and wait for player input. When the player issues a command to their unit, the game will play out the unit's issued command in real-time until the next player unit turn where the game will stop and wait for player input again. When a unit has completed their turn, they will go back into the wait queue.

It's still a turn-based game because each unit will have their own discrete turn and the game stops and waits for a player's input on their turn. The game is bereft of the time-critical element that many people dislike about RT/wP combat. The staggered simultaneous real-time resolution of unit actions is different though and one of the things I've been focusing my feedback on is helping to make sure that the game takes advantage of the strengths of this unique combat system.

Recently in another thread I gave an example of how the use of grenades will likely differ from straight turn-based (or phase-based). In turn-based games usually you select a grenade, click where you want to throw it and the animation plays and you deal some damage to targets in the area of effect. In Copper Dreams, grenades will take time to throw and time to explode, so if you just throw a grenade at some enemies, they might move out of the AoE explosion radius if their turn is coming up soon - so you will have to use strategy, tactics, movement and positioning to make your grenade throws count.

It will probably look kind of similar to RTwP with forced autopause with regards to how the game looks at a glance, but it is definitely turn-based. The AI gets turns but the game will not stop to wait for their input by default as it will be processed automatically. There may end up being an option to toggle a short wait for AI input though.

I think the most important difference between turn-based and real-time for most people is the difference of player input. Turn-based is not time-critical and the game stops and waits for player input. Real-time (with pause) has a time-critical element. I think this game will be more popular with those who enjoy turn-based combat than with those who prefer real-time combat, but we'll see.

The system is designed so that a unit can perform one action per turn. Some actions include an optional short move but I believe if they don't take it, they'll go back into the wait queue faster than other characters.

How I think these 'combined' actions will work (from what Joe and I discussed) is that if the player wants to move a unit first they'll click the action(button or hotkey) that allows a short move and place a dummy/ghost avatar of the unit where they want to move it and then click an enemy to attack with the action they've selected. That unit will then first move to the position selected and make the attack from that position. If they want to move after - they'll select the action(button/hotkey) click the enemy with the action they've selected and then place the dummy avatar and the unit will perform the attack animation and then move to the designated location. Placing the dummy avatar in the same location makes you not move (I think).

Hopefully that sounds intuitive and simple to perform but obviously there will need to be some designation somewhere in the UI itself - most likely in a hover tooltip - as to which actions include a short move, and also somewhere that explains how they work.

The broad details and many of the specific mechanics for the combat system had already been decided upon before I heard about the game, but it's no surprise that I'm interested in the system. I think there's a good opportunity here to create a great (possibly even unique) combat system in this style that ticks all the boxes of being strategical, tactically reactive, difficult and fun - but it all depends on the execution (and testing/feedback ).

Something as simple as say - grenades could be pretty interesting in this game compared to standard turn-based. Enemy A throws a grenade on their turn before yours in the initiative order, you see it coming in real-time ... on your turn you can GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE. Rather than just throwing a grenade and it blows up and does damage on your turn, the simultaneous resolution can add really cool strategical and tactical considerations to the simple act of throwing a grenade - can you get enemies into a situation that if they retreat from the blast radius that there'll be punished by some other means. That means you have to consider when to throw it, unit movement and positioning ... etc etc

That's the kind of stuff that I would like to see but in order for this specific scenario to materialize
Grenades would probably have to deal high enough damage to illicit a player reaction [such as grenade under your feet = dead or close to it] and have a fuse time that allows for (some) retreat depending on turn order
AI would have to react smartly to thrown grenades
Levels would have to provide opportunities to be able to pull this off - either from the level design taking stuff like this into account where it makes sense or just by pure accident
Will this happen? We'll see.

The turn-based with real-time execution system is largely inspired by Grandia. Grandia's combat to my knowledge takes place on a discrete battlefield abstract from the exploration world. Combat here will take place in the exploration world with tactical movement & positioning (with geometry & z-axis). There really aren't any games with this combat system that aren't heavily abstracted in some way (Frozen Synapse comes close but that's phase-based and different again) so it may be the first of its kind in that manner.

The system is directly inspired by Grandia, so that's no surprise. One difference between this system and Grandia is that combat will take place in the exploration world with geometry and z-axis, rather than an abstracted battlefield so there should be more emphasis on movement and positioning than in Grandia.

There will be interrupts, like Grandia - yes. I'm not completely sure of the mechanics of those as of yet. I don't think hitting a unit while it's moving will cause interrupts. Every non-movement and non-environmental action will be performed through the use of inventory items, and depending on what sub-action you choose to make, that action may have an interrupt property. One example is 'suppressing fire', currently I think that will delay unit actions.

And on the inspirations/atmosphere

The primary influences for the game are Blade Runner, Escape from New York and Brazil as far as the setting goes, it's kind of like a pre-orwellian dystopia like "what if the 80s version of Cyberpunk Sci-Fi came true" ... No internet or things like that. So far I would say it probably leans more towards Cyberpunk with Sci-Fi elements but it's 80s Cyberpunk not today's Cyberpunk.

 

[Sensuki]

Hope it gets funded

 

[Terra_Ex]

Backed. Looking forward to seeing the combat system in action, been following this for a while via the rpgcodex thread and it's looking promising.

 

[More_Badass]

Already 18% funded. At $7k, that's already way faster than Serpent's first few days.

 

[Sensuki]

Nearly 25% - not bad. Mostly people digging deep though, not that many backers overall.

From what I hear there'll be at least 7 main updates.

 

[Corpekata]

Staglands had issues but was at least interesting, down for more from this dev.

 

[Moobabe]

Backing, love these guys.

 

[timetokill]

The voice over is soooooo pulpy. Hilarious, but in a good way.

 

[KonradLaw]

Interested. One of the best new RPG devs on the market and Staglands was absolutely brilliant. There are days when I think it might have been the very best RPGs in recent couple years.

 

[Jack The Nipper]

Knew this shit would be isometric. Why do I even try. I'd rather 2d snes graphics than iso

I really need to give up on most indies.

 

[Joseph Merrick]

wow. looks great.

 

[Moobabe]

Knew this shit would be isometric. Why do I even try. I'd rather 2d snes graphics than iso

I really need to give up on most indies.

What were you hoping exactly? A grand 3rd person RPG like The Witcher on a 40k budget?

 

[KonradLaw]

Knew this shit would be isometric. Why do I even try. I'd rather 2d snes graphics than iso

I really need to give up on most indies.

It;s turn-based PC RPG. Iso is the perfect way to do it.
And there are countless RPGs with 2D snes graphics, so I'm not sure what's to complain about?

 

[Sensuki]

Also party-based as well.

 

[KonradLaw]

Also party-based as well.

Yeah. Just like Staglands. It's a shame people are really sleeping over Serpent in the Staglands. The studio is like two people and they had Kickstater, so they're making money anyway, but looking at Steamspy they have like 10K sales so far. It deserves so much more. Especially considering how popular cRPGs are these days. Releasing it like a week after Witcher 3 was such a bone headed move

It's a shame that what can be considered a spiritual successor to Darklands is getting as overlooked as Darklands itself was in 90s

 

[Cyrano]

Looks interesting. Backed.

 

[Moobabe]

Yeah. Just like Staglands. It's a shame people are really sleeping over Serpent in the Staglands. The studio is like two people and they had Kickstater, so they're making money anyway, but looking at Steamspy they have like 10K sales so far. It deserves so much more. Especially considering how popular cRPGs are these days. Releasing it like a week after Witcher 3 was such a bone headed move

It's a shame that what can be considered a spiritual successor to Darklands is getting as overlooked as Darklands itself was in 90s

I played Staglands with a friend over a week or so on his GOG - I might buy Staglands to support these guys.

 

[More_Badass]

The world sounds very open

The game is designed to be quite open world. The island city is separated into district maps you can enter at will, some run by other syndicates, and any building within one of these maps needs to follow the framework setup for all of them — to be enterable and scalable. There are some areas on the island that are disconnected from the city proper that you can explore as well.

The focus on stealth and height should give this a very unique pace compared to other cRPGs

 

[Nikodemos]

Staglands is a great non-Tolkien fantasy RPG. Cool setting and lore.

Oh and regarding the actual game, its low-poly graphics remind me of late-90s - early-00s games like Gorky 17, Ground Control and Incubation. I loved that time period: the graphics were janky by current standards, but just as iconic as the pixel art era of the '80s - early-90s.

 

[KonradLaw]

Staglands is a great non-Tolkien fantasy RPG. Cool setting and lore.

Oh and regarding the actual game, its low-poly graphics remind me of late-90s - early-00s games like Gorky 17, Ground Control and Incubation. I loved that time period: the graphics were janky by current standards, but just as iconic as the pixel art era of the '80s - early-90s.

Yeah. It seems devs are finally starting to be inspired by low-poly art styles in their retro graphics and I like it.

 

[Sensuki]

Apparently there should be a combat update sometime soon.

 

[Sensuki]

Make that an update about some of the rewards and apparently another 15 Collector's Box tier going up soon.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/1575309

edit: Collector's tier open again gogogogo

 

[E_Darkness]

This certainly looks interesting. I'm rather digging the style. I hope this makes funding.

 

[More_Badass]

50% funded!

 

[Speely]

Whoa!! I need this in my life. Backed. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[indigo-cyclops]

Serpent is a fantastic game. I'm totally down for this.

 

[More_Badass]

Serpent is a fantastic game. I'm totally down for this.

Title was getting tight, so couldn't fit Serpent in the Staglands

But I figure cyberpunk and stealth-cRPG is enough to get people interested

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

I never got past the 1st town in staglands. I quit to wait for bug fixes and never got around to playing it again. Did it turn out ok?

 

[Purkake4]

Looks interesting.

 

[CrunchyFrog]

IDK if I dig the artstyle. SitS' pixel art still had a modern feel to it, this just looks deliberately dated in a not altogether appealing way. Still, the premise is kinda neat, and anything by these guys deserves a shot.

 

[Sensuki]

According to Joe, there should be a combat update going up tomorrow.

 

[Sensuki]

New Kickstarter Update: Combat Demonstration:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/1578885

We wanted to give a brief demonstration of combat mechanics, as this is a unique system to the CRPG world. We've had some questions on the basics, and while we'll continue to go over specific elements throughout the campaign this should act as a good starter to give you an idea of where we're headed with it. The premise is utilizing turn-based combat with simulated, timed actions. These actions can happen simultaneously, and create a more dynamic battlefield.

Below is a walkthrough of an encounter with a patrol guard:

https://youtu.be/WgmBl9AmZZo

The Combat Bar

The core of the combat system is the combat bar, as pictured below. The combat bar shows you the players in combat and their place on the timeline.

Upon joining combat, everyone rolls initiative to see where they are placed on the timeline, and then progress downward. The timeline is moving until one of your characters hits the Turn Bar. The actions of enemies are instantaneously chosen and the timeline continues without a break.

When one of your characters land on the Turn Bar, the timeline stops and they can choose an action. Once selected, that action plays out and the combat bar timeline continues.

During the execution wait time, the length of which is dependent on your action, your character is prepping their action: aiming, re-balancing for a swing, or preparing to use an item. At the Execute Bar they fire off the action, and return to the top of the timeline and resume traveling down again. If more than one action is required (like multi-shot or suppressing fire), the character is held at the action bar until complete.

Any character on the timeline can be interrupted or stalled by suppressing fire, being hit, or even by getting bio-hacked. With simultaneous actions, there can be weapon draws to see who can get their shot off first, determined by speed and a weapon's action time.

When NPCs die, they leave behind a big flesh pile that's sure to raise suspicion. To diffuse this situation it's recommended you pick up up the body and throw it somewhere. A body can also be used as a good decoy, or a perfectly acceptable d8 blunt damage roll by heaving it into enemies.

Gravity

Throwing an item instantiates its own icon in the combat bar, and the time it travels is pre-determined by the trajectory of the throw distance. Thrown items use physics, and with a good bounced throw you can get items around corners or onto rooftops.

Aiming a throw is a roll. You select a trajectory point, and how close you get to that point is determined by rolling for accuracy. You'll rarely get right on target, but instead a random point if you miss. Higher the roll, the more close to the target. This means trying to lob a grenade through a small window or crevice is more risky than over a fence, and a bad roll might result in your grenade bouncing and landing at your feet instead.

You can optionally stop the timeline again as you are performing an action to see the rolls at play. This allows you to get the exact look at what's being determined behind the scenes, and what would normally be too much information to place in the timeline.

We'll be having an in-depth interview about the merits of this combat system in the near future that we'll be posting as an update, so if you'd like to hear more about that stay tuned!

Simulationist Dice Rolling

Copper Dreams and The Burning Candle is a more simulationist ruleset — it's about exploration and exploring these mechanics in systems in ways that are supposed to fundamentally make sense. Unloading a full mag into someone at point blank or dropping a missile on them should be an instant kill save a bad hit roll. The dice are meant to emulate the randomness of human action, and your character's skill is simply trying to overcome that.

Weapons themselves have a wide variety of factors that determine their uses, some of these exaggerated to make a more compelling array of choices. A shotgun for instance has very poor accuracy for more than 4 tiles away, as it only gives you a d8 to roll to hit, but works marvelously as a use for suppressing fire. Suppressing fire targets a cone, and anyone in that cone rolls Mental Stability or gets delayed on the combat bar. A weapon has a suppressing fire number that not only determines the roll, but also the length they are delayed. A powerful shotgun blast can keep even hardened militants at bay, giving time to flank or other party members time to prepare.

There are lots of item stats that determine functionality — multi-shot actions are affected by a weapon's recoil, which degrades the to-hit roll after the first shot. The list goes on.

Challenge Roll

The ways you are rolling to hit are determined by a largely static Challenge Roll (CR) number to get over that is comprised of environmental and opponent's skill factors.

Each of these have a small, usually single digit value that added together make up a Challenge Roll to beat. Distance is the predominant one for firearms of course, while melee is going to be more concerned with block or dodge.

Rolls toward a Challenge Roll

There are two ways characters can dynamically roll against an attack to be added to the CR, and that's for melee combatants using block and dodge (extensive XP training and stat numbers would be needed for dodging projectiles). Unless trained otherwise, a character can only block one incoming attack at a time, so these would be negated by any further attacks if they are happening simultaneously.

Dodge is stat and skill related, and very useful against slower melee attacks.

Blocking is determined by a defending character's weapon block number (a pool of d4) and a blocking skill which can be trained. A character who doesn't have a melee weapon equipped cannot block, so if you're in range of someone with a firearm equipped that's easy prey.

The culmination of all this should be that success is determined by a player using logical tactics that are appropriate for a situation, not gauging enemy stats or levels. With this system, a lowly ruffian with a grenade is as threatening as a Copper Face with a grenade.

How we make enemies more lethal, and how we scale your lethality, is in broadening your skills and item uses with training, as well as giving enemies more sneaky and predatory AI, making them work together, and giving them abilities that take more than lead to put down. But that's for another update!

 

[Moobabe]

New Kickstarter Update: Combat Demonstration:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/1578885

https://youtu.be/WgmBl9AmZZo

Having difficulty transcribing it, the images aren't working on here for some reason.

Thanks for this, I'll watch the update shortly.

Worried about the pace of this campaign now, but I suppose there's still plenty of time left.

 

[Sensuki]

A couple of pointers from the video:

The falling over animation is placeholder and will be replaced with a variety of different hit animations that will delay you in the combat bar.

The shootout takes a while because a lot of the combat modifiers and stats haven't been properly implemented yet, so a surprise attack like that will be more deadly in the full game.

 

[Sensuki]

Joe responding to a question from @dungeoncrawl on Kickstarter which I think a few people will be interested in

So is this game going to be heavy on story or more of a tactical romp?

I would describe it as heavy on exploration. You could think of it as a combination of replicating p&p-like combat and the different tools and ways you can interact with the world and environment in a point and click adventure game (which is also meant to give you that p&p freedom). There’s a story weaving through the game, and how you’ll be able to influence it is pretty open ended.

Our goal is to give you a hands-off experience to discover conspiracies and hidden agendas to influence your syndicate completely on your own, and give you a character that has the means of doing that. Event-based jobs give structure to the gameplay, but there is a larger game being played by the syndicates and how you discover and influence that is the real story. Dialogue is also more exploration oriented, with a keyword system that acts as a puzzle of sorts.

We'll have more examples of that in an Update!

And to an inSomnia backer, @Zachariah

Weird question, just a little pet peeve i have, when you get new armor for your character do you plan on making it change the character aesthetically? Same with wounds, and other such thingd.

Armor types change a character's appearance. Each potential party member you can get has a unique character model that changes with different armors. That said ,we have a very open ended inventory system that doesn't have slots and allows you to equip most items without limitations. Various smaller equipment won’t necessarily have appearance changes, or would be too small to have a visual.

As for wounds, your party members don't actually lose limbs, (unless they have a robotic arm that currently is unequipped), but enemy deaths will visualize that. If you've rolled a high ailment amount of damage, or crit, whatever body part is hit will be blown off visually, and we have character models with separated limbs just for that reason. That's two things to hide though!

If your characters are heavily wounded we will have various slower walk/limping animations, as well ones for being overloaded with gear. This has character movement speed hindrances as well, of course.

 

[More_Badass]

New update about the game's various syndicates
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/1582108

 

[GUN-NAC]

While I'm down for one of the high tiers (a little bit extravagant but hey, unspent birthday gift money from a few weeks ago) I don't think I'll be using the reward below.

Become a 3d model

* Everything in previous tiers

* Submit a photo of your face to be used on an NPC or companion. Dress it up!

Assuming the kickstarter is successful I'll put it up as a giveaway. If anyone from GAF is backing the game at a lower amount and wants their likeness in the game: let me know. If there's any interest I'll use modbot to offer it up when things are over (from the winner I'll need a screenshot of your pledge + with you logged in here or something).

What were you hoping exactly? A grand 3rd person RPG like The Witcher on a 40k budget?

It's worth noting that the base version of Copper Dreams is already funded by the devs. The kickstarter is to see their game fully realised and expanded - see the goals further down the page.

Staglands turning out well—and getting the Fool’s Banquet expansion—means this was pretty much an instant back for me.

 

[Sensuki]

If an admin sees this

One of the developers of this game just made an account with the name "whalenought_joe" and wants to come and chat about the game here, but he's stuck in the moderation queue until you approve him!

 

[Moobabe]

If an admin sees this

One of the developers of this game just made an account with the name "whalenought_joe" and wants to come and chat about the game here, but he's stuck in the moderation queue until you approve him!

Mini bump so we go page 1

 

[Sensuki]

New KS Update on Quests and Dialogue System: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/

Some interesting Adventure game inspired mechanics!

 

[More_Badass]

68% with 16 days left, I'm getting a bit worried

 

[grandwizard]

9k~ to go! I really love the look of their low poly models and how they remind me of something like metal gear solid for the playstation.

 

[Moobabe]

68% with 16 days left, I'm getting a bit worried

Nah I think it'll be ok now.

 

[GUN-NAC]

Nah I think it'll be ok now.

The backers per day is still a concern. Needs to be higher, esp at $15.

https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/#chart-daily

 

[Moobabe]

The backers per day is still a concern. Needs to be higher, esp at $15.

https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/#chart-daily

I remember Staglands cutting it fine as well, I still haven't backed this - doing it now!

 

[Mr. Tibbs]

Kill Screen posted a great Copper Dreams write-up just over a week ago. Even though Whalenought are roughly 8k away from their goal with 6 days left, I'm confident they'll clear the initial funding hurdle. Kickstarter campaigns often see a big boost in the last day or so.

Whalenought has also worked hard to make sure every conversation in the game ties back to the main story. Simply talking to a shopkeeper can teach players more about the island, and the goal is for players to unravel Calitana’s mysteries at their own pace. “There won’t be a quest log,” said Hannah. “We believe that a game is more fun and rewarding if the story and important information isn’t spoon-fed to you, but discovered with your own intellect. Nothing ruins sleuthing around an open world more than a pop up congratulating you for discovering something before you’ve realized it yourself.”

 

[grandwizard]

Needs $8K in 6 days :/ Not looking good now

 

[More_Badass]

Needs $8K in 6 days :/ Not looking good now

I've seen crazier. $8k isn't that much for a Kickstarter

---
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/1592512

The three categories of ailments that all different kinds of damage fall under are Lesser, Greater, and Mortal:
- Lesser Ailments are light wounds that would hardly faze you like a bullet graze or getting winded. These can often be recovered from automatically after combat, though some will require further healing. Characters have a large capacity of these types of wounds they can endure.
- Greater Ailments are a medium wound that is bearable but can begin deteriorating character stats and combat efficiency. Some of these kinds of wounds can be shrugged off after combat, but will more often need medical supplies from equipment or a clinic to to be healed.
- Mortal Ailments are a critical problem, like a pierced lung or other organ damage. These will always require medical supplies or a clinic to remove, and may make you consider how to change tactics for that character based on how their body is damaged. These are not "just a flesh wound!"

 

[ekurisona]

6 days to go...

https://mobile.twitter.com/LarAtLarian/status/733748582432571393