There are hexes (on the ground) and hexes (muttered under the breath of steely-eyed sorcerers) and Chaos Reborn nails both. The turn-based mage-biffing simulator from Julian Gollop has been ace in Early Access for, oo, a good six months now. What it hasn’t had is a comprehensive single player mode, with overworld exploration and encounters.
If you own the Steam version of Chaos Reborn, you’ve now access to the Realms of Chaos – a place to battle AI wizard lords and kings across seven faintly neon environments, including four new types: Mana Flux, Palace, Mountains and Plains. Gollops’ Snapshot Games have also played around with and improved some of Chaos’ basic games systems.
Here’s an alternately frantic and soaring trailer that covers the breadth of that:
The current single player quest system encompasses multiple realms with a range of difficulty levels, procedurally generated battle maps, creature allies, co-op fights against lords and kings, and town shops for the buying of permanent bodygear, staffs and talismans (not talismen, apparently).
There’ll be more before final release: namely goblin camps, elven villages, manticore nests and mana fluctuations on the overworld, improved AI, strategic control of objectives, and realms generated by players who reach wizard king rank.
Equipment, meanwhile, no longer levels up but begins fully-powered. That’s meant a reset of players’ existing belongings, but Snapshot are granting in-game gold as compensation.
Chaos Reborn will be 25% off until Monday. If you need me I’ll be drumming my fingers on the desk, pondering the implications of all those new units. Any of you lot play Chaos?