RPGWatch Feature - Encased Review

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RPGWatch's Redglyph played Encased and had enough fun with it to write this review.

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Encased is set in an alternate retro-futuristic '70s era. The game takes place inside a giant Dome that has been built by a mysterious, more advanced civilization called the Forefathers, and which has been recently discovered in a remote desert. CRONUS, a company founded by governments for that purpose, has sent people inside the Dome to explore and assess the situation. There, they found new technologies and strange artefacts left by the Forefather. More people were sent, they built facilities and brought more equipment inside the Dome to recover these artefacts and try to understand their technology. The player is one of the new arrivals.

The Dome is also the host to the Maelstrom, which has a life of its own and reacts to the human presence by spawning anomalies, and triggering other events that will quickly escalate to a potential disaster. As a little caveat in the contract, the journey to the Dome is a one-way trip for living creatures! Since the explorers cannot come back, they can only face those events in order to preserve the settlements and survive.

The story is sound and relatively simple; you will not find overly convoluted plots and extensive lore in Encased. Yet it is original and doesn't follow the usual post-apocalyptic nuclear scenario of many other games. The difference can be felt when the player explores the areas too: it is not a desolated environment but a mix of modern facilities, countryside settlements and a few areas that have been devastated by a cataclysm.