Under the Radar: Cradle – An Evolved Open World RPG

Platform: Windows PC, Linux : Windows PC, Linux

Developer: Mojo Game Studios

Publisher: Mojo Game Studios

Release Date: Summer 2016 : Summer 2016

Open world is a difficult nut to crack. The goal of open world games is often immersion: setting the player loose in a new land, having fun from seeing how a “natural” world would react to so unnatural a presence as the player’s character usually is. But the necessity of creating a wide open space filled with things that people would actually want to interact with is stonewalled by the constraints of development scheduling. Not to mention the opposite end of the spectrum where open worlds feel game-y and every citizen under the moon(s) has a relative’s uber magic weapon stashed in some far-flung cave. Mojo Game Studios thinks they can crack that shell and feed gamers the delicious macadamia nut inside (video games, like macadamias, are both expensive and delicious) with their upcoming, open-world Action RPG called Cradle.

Cradle is set in the world of Anora after a coalition of five gods put the kibosh on a sixth: Aderyn, the god of free will and creation. The player character, able to choose from a current list of five classes, begins the game fleeing the god of hunger into one of the last temples for Aderyn; I assume your offense was eating the last slice of pizza at his feast. From there, the player character decides that enough is enough and starts on a mighty journey to bring a landmass called the “Cradle” back to the world from its banishment.

Beyond the emphasis on lore, which gets my man-ties in a pleasant twist, Cradle is boasting an innovative combat system that the developers have dubbed “RealFight”. While the word “innovative” immediately made me put on my Cap-o’-Derision (copy-marked, trade-righted, whatever that’s called, et cetera), after a careful dissection of both their words and their short combat demo video, I feel much more relaxed about the prospect. The video below shows that the “RealFight Combat Systems” essentially employs some quick developers’ magic to create a more cinematic and simultaneously more targeted experience while fighting.

The Kickstarter page is rife with more intimate details for all the systems and ideas going to Cradle – from the way restoration of mana and health is handled to the styles of weaponry that will be available to each of the classes. If you want to help Cradle grow from the cradle into a full-fledged game, you can head to the Kickstarter page. Otherwise, you can keep it on your radar because good open-world games are hard to find. Why make it harder by forgetting one that has the potential to be great?

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