Introduction:

MATTERPUNK is a psychedelic-horror homage to classic real-time sandbox role-playing games, particularly the first three TES titles (MW in particular).

MATTERPUNK is a complete sandbox that focuses on player choice, CRPG crunch, and roleplaying rather than offering a pre-made experience.

The modestly-sized open-world isn’t fully developed because this is still a prototype, and I haven’t incorporated some features like chem-making and sneaking, but thus far there’s:

• One small, open world
• A pair of towns
• A strange, eerie, deserted home with haphazard residents
• Five dungeons with sporadic treasure
• Random monsters and npcs that periodically appear
• A dialog system that presently includes haggling, repair for in-game currency (if your “hardware” skill isn’t high enough), and a “small talk” feature inspired by procedurally generated lines that are both bizarre and nonsensical and excessively sad.
• A crunchy role-playing game. One of four attributes—Power, Personality, Wit, and Speed—multiplies your “Trades” (similar to your TES skills).

-Note for CRPG fans: What’s described above is a simplified overview of how the system actually works. Behind the scenes, there’s far more mechanical depth. For example, Trade × Attribute is often divided by 10 for balance purposes, and RNG is a major factor. In many situations, the game rolls a random value that represents the difficulty of a check—such as hitting an enemy or fixing a weapon—while also rolling a separate random value that acts as a base score. Your Trade × Attribute bonus (sometimes raw, sometimes multiplied by 10, depending on context) is then added to that base roll. The resulting total is compared against the required roll as a boolean pass/fail check.

In the case of attacks, damage is calculated by taking the weapon’s base damage, adding a random float, and factoring in a “condition score,” which represents how the weapon’s current durability influences its damage output. On top of that, a stats bonus is applied, typically calculated as Trade × Attribute / 10.

It’s also worth noting that the Athletics and Acrobatics skills are heavily inspired by Morrowind. While MATTERPUNK doesn’t use a fatigue system, Athletics and Speed determine how fast you walk and sprint, while Acrobatics and Speed influence jump distance. The underlying implementation probably isn’t identical to Morrowind’s, but it feels very similar—just smoother and less janky, thanks to the game being built in Godot rather than the old Creation Engine.

So, if the earlier explanation sounded a bit too clean or streamlined… that’s because it was. The real system is anything but.

• A few pre-made classes, or you may create your own.
• Cool tunes

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