Sleep Between The Stars: InSomnia

Everyone at RPS suffers from insomnia once in a while, or at least we all spend the early hours of every Tuesday morning clutching bedclothes tightly around our chests, in the grip of a sweat colder than a British summer, wondering if rolling our eyes at Call of Duty is an actual job. It's natural to assume that a game that goes by the name Insomnia would be a survival horror game about such acts of lonely introspection but the trailer and press release for the first project from Russian studio MONO reveal something entirely different. It's an online RPG with tactical combat and procedurally generated sandbox elements, set on a generation ship of sorts. The video is a demonstration of the tech and setting rather than an exposition-packed chunk of narrative.

MONO are planning a Kickstarter campaign at the beginning of November but there's already a fair amount of information at the official site. The setting has claimed my interest at the very least:

The bulk of the action in the game will take place on an enormous, half-deserted space station that has spent more than four centuries travelling to its ultimate destination: the Evacuation Point. Most of the station is abandoned and has come to be known as “the Dump,” but there are also many sectors that have never been explored. The survivors are trying to maintain order within a manned sector called URB-e in the hopes that the station will one day reach its destination.

MONO are keen on mysteries, it seems, with the station's unexplored areas begging to be discovered and 'dynamic' and 'hidden' content for players to discover.

I'm naturally cautious as regards the longevity of online games but hopefully the Kickstarter campaign will include enough details to dismiss some of that caution. For now, here's some information on character advancement because it is wrong to have an entire post about an RPG without any mention of 'stats' and 'classes'.

There is no rigid system of levels or classes in InSomnia. When creating your character, you select Stats that will determine their basic capabilities. Character advancement involves developing Skills and selecting Traits that influence various aspects of the game. Your character’s unique set of skills, traits, and abilities thus forms gradually over time. Advanced characters will have a lot of advantages, but a solid understanding of the game’s mechanics can make it entirely possible, albeit challenging, for a “Noob” to defeat a “Veteran.”

I'd like to perform a 'find and replace' function on the entirety of the internet, replacing 'noob' with 'newcomer'.