Old Amiga classic The Chaos Engine has been having a little facelift recently. The twenty-year-old top-down shooter has been spruced up, online-enabled, and made ready for a new platform: the PC. We’ll be seeing it release on Steam on August 29th, complete with achievements and enhanced graphics.
Abstraction Games have been updating The Chaos Engine for its re-release, and have worked with the aim of keeping the game completely intact. Rather than remake or re-imagine, The Chaos Engine has simply been tidied up and enhanced.
“This really feels like the right time to bring back The Chaos Engine” said Mike Montgomery, one of the founding members of original Chaos Engine developers The Bitmap Brothers. “There are many fond memories of The Chaos Engine and I wanted to make sure that the game was true to the original without losing its charm during the restoration process. The option to play in the original ‘Classic’ mode with the added option to play in ‘Enhanced mode’ with its refined pixel-perfect finish is a clever way to satisfy all enthusiasts! It feels a completely natural transition to the PC.”
The Chaos Engine was notable for its co-operative play, in which players could choose two of six heroes to battle through the game’s steampunk Victorian England. Abstraction have done their best to recapture the thrill of those early co-op days. “We grew up with the Amiga and those classic Bitmap games were the inspiration for a lot of us who went on to work in games and development. For many of us, The Chaos Engine was our first taste of co-op and was a platform that incited our love of top down shooters,” says Ralph Egas, CEO of Abstraction Games. “The Chaos Engine holds such fond memories for so many people and it stands the test of time and we were determined to restore the game to its full and amazing pixel-perfect glory, with a couple of cool enhancements!”
The Chaos Engine will release for Windows, Mac, and Linux on August 29th, and be available from Steam, Good Old Games, and Get Games.