Dev Update 0 – Involving the community

Hello! Welcome to our first video dev diary episode!

We released an interactive form that lets players create an NPC for Encased, and receive unique in-game items in return. The form consists of a character generator and a set of questions that help determine the player's behavior and preferences when confronted with different game scenarios.

Link to the form where you can create your NPC: https://cronus.darkcrystalgames.com

Filling out the form requires a certain amount of creativity: besides answering various questions the players will have to allocate character's stats and come up with a fun backstory. All of the answers will be recorded in the employee database of C.R.O.N.U.S. Foundation, and the names, invented by the players for their characters, will show up in the in-game documents, terminals, and emails exchanged by the company's workers.

While traveling the desert, the protagonist may find an abandoned data-center and access a database filled with characters created by our community. The most interesting files will serve as a framework for full-fledged in-game NPCs. As a reward for filling out the form, each responder will receive a unique in-game item — The First Settlers' Helmet — available only to those who completed the survey. The players will be sent a Steam-key for the free DLC right after the game's official release.

We made for you example of biography turned into the NPC. Meet Ville Luoma.

Skinny young kid. Doesn't say much, but a good listener. And a good thinker. He smiles as much as he talks. The last time he had a genuine smile on his face was when he smiled at a recruiter at the Finnish C.R.O.N.U.S. office while filling up the candidate form.

"Ideas capture me," – that's how Ville begins the tale of himself.

When he was 12, the Luoma family sold their failing business in Tampere and moved to Kemi, a small town near the sea not far from Swedish border. Father organized a small boat engine repair workshop, but it didn't go well. The senior Luoma didn't want to struggle and choose the easy way: he took a gun and blew his brains out.

So at the age of 14 Ville remained with his mother from whom he inherited a calm personality and the ability to adapt to any situation. It's not that a little considering that from his father he inherited even less: the workshop and a big cabinet with a few pistols and two hunting rifles. Sometimes Ville would secretly take a gun and left to the woods to practice in shooting.

"Ideas capture me" – Ville writes again. The idea of turning the father's workshop into an underground armory captured him right away. At first, he was just making copies of old Berettas, later, when he improved the shutter and the trigger mechanism, he constructed the first pistol of his own design which he sold soon. Then he made another one. Then – ten more. It was a fine bonus to the modest family budget.

Though talented, Ville is not very careful. Not many people knew about his doings in Kemi, but it wasn't a total secret anyway. As soon as Ville reached the age of 18, he realized it's time to pull the ripcord and applied to the C.R.O.N.U.S. Blue Wing, but he didn't get a chance to depart with the latest batch of settlers cause he was caught.

In the end, Ville got into The Dome anyway, though as a member of the Orange Wing.

That's all for today! See you in the next episode and meet you under the Dome!

If you haven't seen our Backstory trailer – here it is: