InSomnia Has Old-School RPG Style, Modern Graphics

If you'll remember, we've posted about InSomnia before on RPS - Adam because he came across the "dieselpunk" post-apocalyptic role-player's Kickstarter page, and me because I never sleep. Unfortunately, the Kickstarter ultimately met its untimely end in the dank, art deco-rated tunnels of obscurity, pulling in only a small fraction of the $70,000 it needed. Part of that, developer MONO contends, is due to miscommunications on what exactly the game entails. It's about to launch another Kickstarter, but before it does that, it wants to clear a few things up. New trailer and details below.

Due to a lack of clarity in the game's original Kickstarter, many believe InSomnia to be some sort of MMO, which is apparently not the case. MONO explained:

"InSomnia is an atmospheric single-player\co-op RPG, set in the dieselpunk, apocalyptic universe, "living" open world sandbox & realtime, tactical gameplay. InSomnia will send you into murky retro-futuristic universe of metal jungles permeated by Noir and Dieselpunk. Young Noman awakes from the cryogenic sleep on a colossal space station travelling through space for about 400 years to an elusive Point of evacuation, a distant planet, where the residents of the station will be able to revive mankind. Either way, you will have to survive this tough world to learn the real reason for the mankind to embark on such a risky journey, and how mistakes of the past have influenced the present."

Most of the game will function as you'd expect from this sort of thing, so there will be branching choices, dialogue options, a non-linear story, character progression, crafting, and other such RPG staples. At this stage, however, combat looks pretty barebones (though there is plenty of time for that to change), and I'm not entirely sure how co-op decision-making will work. MONO touts it as a feature, but they don't elaborate beyond saying, "each player will need to make his own decisions and influence the storyline."

Also of some concern: MONO says it's planning a series of post-release campaigns to "tell the whole story." Apparently there will be 20 additional chapters in some form or fashion. That's, um, a lot by any measure. Also, will they be free? If MONO plans to take your precious, precious gas money in exchange for them, then how much will it charge?

So it's still rather complicated, and I hope MONO figures out how to message it better before launching another Kickstarter. I really like what I've seen of its world, but everything else leaves me feeling uncertain. I can always go for a good open-world-ish role-player with a tastefully junked up setting, so I wish this project the best of luck. I just hope its many moving parts snap together nicely. Otherwise, all we'll get is a pile of, well, garbage.