Review: Chaos Reborn

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At a Glance: Genre: Strategy Turn-Based Modes: Co-op Cross-Platform Multiplayer Multi-player Single-player Controller Support: Full Platforms: Linux Microsoft Windows OS X

Chaos Reborn is described as “a fast paced, turn-based wizard combat game with strategic Realm Quests.” That’s a fairly general description for a game, so let me expand a bit on the actual game and how it plays. I will add the disclaimer that I will be focusing on the multiplayer functionality of the game. There is single-player gameplay, but the multiplayer aspect of the game has been the most entertaining. The game is a hexagonal, fantasy, turn-based strategy game infused with RNG casting and combat. Essentially, this means that regardless of the master strategist that you consider yourself to be, you can still be burned by the randomness of casting percentages and to-hit percentages. Games can hold up to four wizards at one time. Two versus two and free-for-all are both game options.

Each player controls a wizard that is an active participant in the world. When your wizard is successfully struck with a damage spell or attacked successfully by a summoned creature, you’ve been eliminated from the game. Each wizard starts with a selection of available cards to choose from. Only one card can be cast per turn. Cards include creatures, direct damage, crowd control, impassible objects, self buffs, and everything in-between that you could think of in a Dungeons and Dragons-type of situation. Want to nuke a wizard or creature with a magic bolt? Done. Feel like summoning a giant Hydra to defend and attack? Sure. Need to block off a section of the map with a wall of trees that attack anything near them? Go for it. So what’s the catch? Simply put, RNG. Each card you cast has a percent chance to succeed. If the spell fails, you gain mana that goes towards a spell only your wizard has access to. Normally that spell gives you multiple incarnations of a creature that you would normally try to summon. Instead of casting one Hydra with the normal Hydra card, you may have the special spell for your wizard that puts two of them on the board. Mind you, the special spell card for your wizard also has a chance to fail. If you have a card available to you that you don’t particularly want, you can drag it to your special spell and essentially destroy the card for additional mana. Be careful though, you only have a limited amount of cards available to you in the game.

Creatures summoned in the game have their own custom stats for attack, defense, range, movement, and special attributes such as undead or counter-attack. Undead creatures, for instance, can only be successfully attacked and killed by other undead creatures or creatures that have the undead slayer ability. Combat resolves the same way casting initial spells does: RNG. Each creature has a percent chance to hit other creatures on the board based on their attributes. However, a successful hit, regardless of the creature or attack power, will kill the creature or wizard that was attacked. Everything essentially has one hit-point.

There are three factions of cards: chaos, neutral, and law. Chaos cards are what you would consider evil. They include, but are not limited to, haunted trees, vampires, hell hounds, hydras, and manticores. Neutral cards include cards from nature such as rats, spiders, lions, hawks, and blobs. Law cards are the good in the world. They incorporate sapphire dragons, unicorns, dwarves, and crusaders. There is a slider bar at the top of the screen that keeps track of the trending types of cards being cast. For instance, if law cards are mostly being cast, then law cards become easier to cast as the bar goes up. If someone successfully casts a chaos card, the bar moves back down towards being even. Neutral cards do not affect the casting bonus in any way. They have a consistent casting cost that never changes. Fake versions of all creatures can also be cast, but be warned: every wizard has a permanent dispel card available. If the wizard using dispel is correct, they still can cast their normal card during their turn and the fake card is destroyed immediately. However, if the wizard dispelling a creature is wrong, that is the only card they are permitted to play on their turn.

The environments that the game utilizes is beautiful and the detail on the wizards and creatures are quite good. I was not blown away by the sound effects in the game, but they weren’t horrible either. The biggest strength the game has is replayability, especially in multiplayer. It never quite feels like the same game twice with the wide array of cards available and the RNG element incorporated into each attack and spell.  If you have a few friends that enjoy fantasy environments with a turn-based game style that incorporates the RNG aspect at the core, I couldn’t recommend the game more. The game is currently available on Steam for $19.99 and does go on sale quite frequently. Keep an eye out for the sale price beginning June 23rd when the Steam Summer Sale is rumored to kick off.

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