Fellow Goggers, lend me your ears!

Whalenought Studios, the creators of Serpent in the Staglands, are in the final days of their KS for Copper Dreams, their latest game that they describe as "A CRPG featuring cyber-espionage on the edge of the galaxy. Turn based combat with timed actions, stealth and chainsaw arms."

The KS and the game have received a shamefully small amount of attention from gaming media and RPG enthusiasts, especially considering the studio's innovative approach to RPG mechanics. Their new ruleset "The Burning Candle", drops the usual RPG tropes in favour of re-imagining the way experience, health, exploration/environment and combat work.

You can find more about it on their Kickstarter page or in their interview with Matt Chat.

So, if you are interested in the game they are making, please consider pledging. If you are not and have a gaming friend who might be, please spread the info around, so that we may get the game founded and have another non-cookie cutter CRPG to enjoy.

Why oh why didn't they use the Staglands engine is what I want to know. That beautiful pixel/sprite-based style replaced with ugly low-res 3d models.

I was also disappointed by this. Despite the rather interesting changes to mechanics (they really went all-out on this, starting with formalizing the Burning Candle ruleset), visually the game couldn't be less appealing as it is. Not only is it a particularly bland, generic sort of 3D, the art direction seems like a miss to me.

Anyway, here's the official reasoning: Source

Because in Copper Dreams, you can turn around the isometric camera by 90 degrees. This way you can more easily find alternative approaches to entering an area/building. The game also builds on verticality, which means that you have climbing and jumping involved, which was not possible in the SitS engine.

Furthermore, they mention Metal Gear Solid (among other titles) as their inspiration, which is why they focus on espionage and an aesthetic more suitable to that era of gaming.

The look reminds me a lot of playstation 1 games, and it kinda works for me.

Game looks interesting, but I'm not enamored of the time factor. I hate racing the clock when I play games. NAybe I'm misunderstanding how they plan to utilize time in the game though.

The game is turned-based and pauses when it is time for your character(s) to take action. It has however a wait period (thing of it as initiative is other RPGs) and an execution wait (time to aim for example). This allows for something akin to simultaneous turn execution found in certain strategy games.

For example, you choose to use suppressing fire and that takes some time to execute. If you succeed in your dice throws and your enemies are still in the wait period, they will be moved further up the wait time. If however, an enemy gets a shot at you during the execution wait, your action may be delayed.

The time element of the combat system is explained in this image, or you can watch a combat preview in this video (although to be fair, the combat video only has one PC and one NPC, so it does not show everything that the combat system allows).

i agree. while i typically have a preference for pixel based sprites, i quite like these. sort of ugly but in a loveable way. they look how i remember ps1 games looking, but these graphics actually look much better than most ps1 games (much sharper and much more detailed).

Yes, and the colour scheme in particular, which I saw in several PS1 games, eg
copper dreams vs Metal Gear Solid
The kind of blueish-greenish concrete

Ah, thanks. I admit I didn't take a long time looking for a clearer explanation of the time aspect. Looks good, then. :)

Almost there, only about $750 to go in 55 hours!

And don't forget to also vote for it in the GOG wishlist.

Thanks to everyone's effort, Copper Dreams has reached its funding goal! But the battle is not yet over and we can still push toward the first stretch goal.

For those of you who do not have a credit card or do not wish to use Kickstarter, you can now also pledge via PayPal.

Nice. Another cyberpunk game. Vote it

Nice to see it reached it's goal, love the Metal Gear Solid, Vagrant Story PS1 graphics. Much more appealing to me than 2d.

Less than 24h remain in Copper Dreams' KS campaign, so if anyone still wants to grab physical goodies, now is your chance to do so.