You unlock a talisman slot at level 11 in your body gear [in Chaos Reborn]. You can put a spellbinding talisman in, or a minor creature buff. When you get to level 22 you can add another talisman. That might be something like a mana-binding talisman that allows you to get mana in certain situations, such as, for example, if a number of creatures have been killed so far in battle.
At level 33 you might get much more powerful talismans, which are heroic or transmutation or sorcery types. You can do some unusual things.
Transmutation might transform your wizard into an undead character for the duration of the battle. A sorcery talisman might extend the range of your creature summoning spells. Instead of directly adjacent to you, you could cast them two hexes away from you.
Above: Your gear will add to your success and power.
GamesBeat: Is there a limit to how many of those items you can carry?
Gollop: Yeah. In your inventory, which is magically stored back on the planet of Limbo, you can’t have an infinite amount of stuff, but you can have quite a lot.
Your stats, your abilities, are determined by the equipment you’re using — the body gear, the staff. By changing those and swapping out for some others you have, you can change your gameplay style and your character’s abilities.
There’s no fixed path that you have to choose which you can’t go back on. This was an important objective from the very beginning.
A lot of RPGs force you to go down some kind of tree-like structure for your character development. In Chaos Reborn, it’s a bit more flexible in the sense that by choosing any combination of equipment and spells, you’ll have essentially a different wizard character.
Your objective in the RPG mode is to try to acquire more equipment and develop more strategies and combinations that will give you more choice and flexibility in combat.
GamesBeat: Can you change gear in combat?
Gollop: No. You have to prepare yourself before going in.
Above: The cards at the bottom of the screen represent the spells you can cast.
GamesBeat: Spells are randomly generated. Is that likely to change as well?
Gollop: Ah, yes. A little bit. There will still be a large element of random generation there, but you’ll be able to influence your spell selection in several ways.
You can have a special talisman of spellbinding. They guarantee that you have a particular spell in your deck at the start of the game.
You can choose a particular staff, which influences your deck. If you have a staff of chaos, you’ll have more chaos spells in your deck.
Your deck is also built from the spells that you’ve learned. As you explore the realms and find spellbooks and learn spells, you can choose which spells you want to learn and which spells you don’t want to learn. That can also influence your spell selection.
It’s a bit more subtle than, say, a traditional collectible card game. But as I say, the more talismans and equipment and spellbooks you get, the more control you have in how your deck’s going to turn out.
But there’s still going to be a random element there which you can’t completely eliminate before you go into battle.
Above: Concept art of a realm exploration level in Chaos Reborn.
GamesBeat: Can you describe the realm exploration system?
Gollop: This is the main RPG aspect of the game. You’ll enter a realm. This can either be procedurally generated by a server or created by another player, a wizard king player. This realm will consist of different regions – forests, mountains, towns, citadels, ruins.
Your objective is to find and defeat the wizard king and all his wizard lords. On the way you’ll fight many battles, but you’ll also win or scour for spellbooks and equipment and items.
You’ll be able to recruit allies in the towns. You’ll be able to hire mercenaries in various places, like goblin accountants. Or at a dragon cave you might even be able to hire a dragon to serve you.
The realm quest itself is actually a bit of a strategy game in itself. You have to figure out the most efficient path to victory, to defeat the wizard king. That means you have to consider how you’re going to move around the realm, what resources you need to gather.
When you go to a town, it will give you rumors about what allies might be available to you in certain locations, or what wizard towers you can go to move around and teleport between them.
You need to plan your route, because if you take too long, you’re giving the wizard king time to cast a banishing spell and he’ll basically kick you out of the realm. It’s a little bit of a race against time, in a way. You have to balance your progression. You need the allies and the spells and equipment to help you, but if you take too long getting it, you might get kicked out.
[Non-player-generated maps are created as players need them, he said, making the number someone can run through nearly infinite.]
Above: Concept art of a wizard king’s palace.
GamesBeat: If the opposing wizard king can generate the map, and the objective is to kill them, what’s to stop them from creating a map that’s impossible to complete?
Gollop: Well, you might be able to do that. But the realm editor gives you certain limitations. If you’re a wizard king, you have a certain amount of points you can spend on the placement of items in different places.
But your objective is not necessarily to make it very difficult for the player. You want to make it interesting for the player.
GamesBeat: So you’re in more of a dungeon master role.
Gollop: Yes. Players will rate your realm based on how interesting it was, rather than how difficult it was. Obviously it needs to be challenging, but not too difficult. It also needs to be interesting.
Above: You want to be one of these: a god.
If you get good ratings as a wizard king, you could be promoted to the next social rank, which is demigod. Once you get to the demigod stage, you’ll be in charge of a guild, if you like, of players. You’ll be responsible for managing those players to achieve the guild rankings.
If you do particularly well as a demigod in terms of your guild rankings, you might qualify to become a god, in which case you have even more influence over the game. You can bestow blessings on your followers. You have a chance to influence what happens in the game’s story and lore as the game develops.
There won’t be many gods, for sure. That’s if you choose to go that direction. It’s not obligatory to go through those social ranks, but it’s another aspect of the game. You could just concentrate on acquiring equipment and leveling up and exploring realms, or you could focus more on the multiplayer side. It’s entirely up to you.