Cradle Is a Kickstarter You Should Care about.

You probably haven’t heard of Cradle, the ambitious first-person RPG being developed by Mojo Game Studios, but should.

In the words of the development team, Cradle is “the story of an outcast who stumbles into the center of an ages old struggle between humanity, nature, and the gods. Cradle presents you with a striking narrative set in a breathtaking world.”

You take up the role of an exiled traveler, sent to the ‘Cradle’. It is a land left barren by a war of the gods, with only a few inhabitants left. The world itself is made up of several open environments: Iceland, Quarry, Desert, Bayou and Titanwood.

Cradle’s selling point is its combat system, which promises a “new type of fast paced melee-combat that will force you to rely on your wits. The combat system is driven by your intent and purpose, making your skill, not chance, what determines the outcome of battles.”

In practise this means more realistic attacks based on where you aim on an enemy – head, torso, legs etc. – and the starting position of the weapon, a left slash followed by a right in one fluid motion, rather than returning to a guard position like in Skyrim. Even in the alpha footage it looks pretty good, and it’ll only get better.

They’ll be five classes: Arcanist, Druid, Ranger, Paladin and Swordsman. Each will have unique weapons and armour, but most interesting is the plan for each to traverse the environment in different ways, for example the Paladin might use brute force to smash aside an obstacle that the Druid magics away.

As you would expect from an RPG, there are side quests as well as the main one. Mostly these will be received from the land, finding a treasure map or a scroll, with hints and clues to a goal, rather than simple ‘go here, kill 10 bandits’ style missions.

Can it be done? It’s an incredibly ambitious project for a new team to undertake, but they definitely have the passion down. The aim is to release on PC in the summer of 2016, with other platforms added as stretch goals.

At the time of writing Cradle has received $37,615 of its $350,000 goal with 24 days to go. The video pitch is below.