Chaos Reborn, a remake of the ancient Chaos, is now on Steam Early Access and looking pretty sweet. Another Kickstarter-backed labor of love by a veteran developer (Julian Gollop, creator of the original Chaos and also XCOM), the game will eventually include a very elaborate multiplayer campaign mode where players can become lords of their own chaos realms for other players to challenge, and eventually become gods. For now it's just the base wizard wrestling game which is sweet on its own.
G-G-G-GAMEPLAYChaos has a pretty cool gameplay design. It's elements are all familiar but they come together in a unique way that's never really been replicated. As the title suggests, the basic concept is two (or more) wizards duking it out with spells and occasionally fists, on a hex-based battlefield. Your spellbook is represented by a deck of cards, mostly creatures along with a couple equipment spells and more direct magic. Each spell has a percent chance to succeed depending on its power, ranging from 90% for the most basic creatures down to 50% or less for gamechanging spells. Each spell also has an alignment, Law, Chaos, or Neutral, and casting spells of law or chaos will shift the magical climate towards that alignment. This increases the chance of casting spells of that alignment. While currently you can't customize your deck to focus on one alignment, working to shift the battle alignment with easy spells will help prepare for the big ones. You can also augment cast chances with mana, attained by killing enemies, burning cards, and activating mana nodes. Finally, creatures can be summoned as an illusion, which has a 100% success chance but dies automatically if attacked and can be destroyed remotely with the disbelieve spell.
The combat is also pretty unique, more akin to a board game in its style. Nobody has HP, not even your wizard. Each unit has attack and defense values for both physical and magic attacks. All successful attacks are fatal. This helps give the game that tense wizard battle feel you might know from games like Warlocks, where a single slip-up can be fatal. We are dealing with wizards, who are known for dishing out way more than they can take.
It's a pretty tough game and can be frustrating in the same way a lot of RNG-centric games are. Like Wesnoth and Blood Bowl, it can often feel like the dice hate you. Sometimes the spell you need to cast will fail. Sometimes a goblin will kill your hydra. Very often you'll lose to magic bolts. But it's still fun. Like those games it's clear that a lot of the challenge of the game is learning how to manage risk and dispose of your limited resources effectively.
It's on a decent discount for the next week or so and worth the price in my opinion. The early access has plenty of features and will only get better as they roll out more stuff. Anybody else playing it? Share your pro strats. Here's mine: Nobody ever disbelieves early 60-70% creatures like spiders and skeletons. Skeletons especially can only be attacked by magic so they make for a pretty safe illusion
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Topic: Chaos Reborn - The Wizards Do Not Actually Wrestle. (Read 7478 times)