14 DAY TRIAL // Chaos Reborn, the upcoming tactical role-playing game from the father of the original X-Com, Julian Gollop, is coming out on Steam Early Access on December 9.
X-COM was a brutal turn-based tactics game, and the popularity of its modern reboot made Gollop think about one of the games he felt would have the most potential for success with a makeover, Chaos: The Battle of Wizards, a 1985 tactical game released on the ZX Spectrum.
The game was successfully funded on Kickstarter back in April this year, and since then the development team has been hard at work, now being at the stage where the fruit of their labor can be launched on Early Access, enabling those who didn't get the chance to participate in the crowdfunding campaign to join in and try out the work-in-progress version of the title.
A rapid evolution
Back when the Kickstarted pitch was launched, the game barely had a playable prototype with placeholder art and a handful of functional spells, and now the fast-paced turn-based wizard combat game is a full-fledged working title, with a plethora of creatures and spells to choose from on the battlefield.
The game's premise is pretty straightforward: throw some wizards together and sparks are about to fly. The game is geared toward competitive multiplayer, but there will also be a wide assortment of single-player challenges and missions for gamers to complete at their leisure.
Furthermore, players will also be able to join guilds, trade items, and climb the social ranks, and the roadmap ahead includes a ton of additional features, among which battles with AI wizards, arenas and the possibility of using multiple rule sets.
A resurgence of turn-based tactics games on PC
Gollop retreated from PC and focused his creative juices on Nintendo's handhelds for a few years before embarking on recreating Chaos Reborn, his most notable effort being Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, a tactical game for the Nintendo 3DS.
The success of tactical games such as Fire Emblem and many others, combined with the warm reception that XCOM and The Banner Saga got on PC, inspired Gollop to return to his roots and reimagine the classic turn-based tactical battles between wizards in an updated fashion.
The title does not simply aim to offer one more choice to fans of tactical encounters, but instead to deliver an entirely new experience, complete with manipulation of the playing field, bluffing, illusory creatures meant to lure combatants into unfavorable positions, and a lot of other tricks that will spice up the action.
Chaos Reborn will be released on Steam Early Access on December 9, available for Windows PC, Mac and Linux. You can check it out in action in the trailer below, showing the current progress of the game.
