Encased is the first release from developers Dark Crystal Games and publishers, Prime Matter. It's an isometric, dystopian, sci-fi RPG.
Encased's story is set before, during, and after an apocalypse in an alternative version of the 1970s in which humanity discovers "The Dome" , a giant zone left by a mysterious, unknown civilization colloquially known as "The Forefathers".
The Dome contains dangerous but potentially powerful otherworldly relics. Relics that corporations and organizations desperately want to get their hands on, sending in teams with the sole purpose of extracting whatever they can. This is where you come in...
Any gamers who have played Divinity, will instantly feel at home with character creation, controls and mechanics of Encased. Players begin their character creation either with a premade avatar or by rolling a fresh one from scratch. Either way the character will start with one of five disciplines - science, engineering, security, management, or convict - which affects both their initial stats, specialization, and opens (or prevents) unique dialogue choices within the game.
Once created, it's off to get kitted out and familiar with the controls in the starting mission. However its not long before disaster strikes, as a strange anomaly of incredible proportions – "The Maelstrom" – goes out of control, cutting all communication with the outside world and plunging The Dome into chaos. The only hope of survival is travelling across the vast wasteland, finding companions, and choosing whether to confront or cooperate with the six factions that have sprung up in the aftermath.
Encased is a fairly unique spin on the isometric Survival, CRPG. The world building and lore have being painstakingly crafted, probably to the point of there being too much.
This is an incredibly text heavy game, even though a lot of the dialogue has been really well voiced, you will still find yourself going back over logs, trawling through text, trying to find pieces of information.
Graphically it's okay, nothing jaw dropping. If someone says to you "post-apocalyptic crpg" .... You know exactly what it's going to look like; it's going to be isometric, you know the textures, terrain, the color palette etc.
Encased doesn't really deviate from this trope or challenge your expectations too much for it's core gameplay, but it does have some absolutely gorgeous cutscene and incidental art as you play through.
The voice acting, effects and music are all top notch and everything combines well to create a high level of immersion which is exactly what you want in a crpg.
Although Encased really is its own game and an incredible amount of thought and writing has gone into it; it really does feel like it's somewhat lifted the character interactions and story elements of Disco Elysium and fused them with the freedom to approach and interact with the environment, characters and enemies from Divinity 2. Both of these comparisons are meant as praise.
Encased is an excellent game and you can really feel how much effort has gone into creating it. This is an absolute must for any sci-fi crpg fans, you really can completely lose yourself in this world. An alternate 70s sci-fi setting proves to be just as fascinating as it sounds.
However for newcomers to the genre or perhaps more casual players, the slightly slower pacing and large amounts of text may prove a little off-putting. Use Disco Elysium as the litmus test, if you enjoyed playing that, you can be pretty sure you will enjoy this.
Encased is available now on Steam.
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