Julian Gollop designed X-COM, a difficult strategy game to dive into.
Perhaps as a bit of atonement, he’s now working on the hybrid strategy-RPG Chaos Reborn, which re-creates his original fantasy strategy game Chaos — and makes his whole approach to the genre quite a bit more friendly.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1667605,"post_type":"feature","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"A"}']Chaos Reborn is a turn-based strategy (think hexes) fantasy multiplayer game with a serious solo or duo RPG side: exploration levels with quests and missions and followers and upgradable items.
After you level up your character and its gear, you battle others in a turn-based arena, throwing minions, spells, and melee attacks their way. You can even bluff opponents by summoning minions that don’t actually exist, that do full damage until they are “disbelieved.”
The original Chaos hit in 1985 as the video game version of a fantasy board game Gollop had designed. In many ways, it resembled the limited Early Access version of Chaos Reborn that you can play now. You’re randomly assigned a wizard, a staff, and cards with spells or abilities on them at the start of the match, playing one to three other live or computer-controlled opponents.
Playing the master and getting the details
Above: A player drops five Shadow Wood tree minions onto the map.
I interviewed Gollop from his home in Bulgaria and played a couple of quick matches of Chaos Reborn. It’s due out later this year for $20 on PC, Mac, and Linux. Steam Early Access versions with some extras are available now starting at $20.
In one match after I’d had a few hours to practice, Gollop unsurprisingly annihilated me. But I stole the second match … with some truly amazing randomness, too much trust from my opponent, and a strong hint from him on my end game. (He usually doesn’t lose; check out the Gollop Wallop beta tournament records for a chuckle.)
Consider that proof of this game’s friendliness.
The questing/RPG aspect of the game comes later this spring, giving players the chance to find and upgrade staves and other character items and abilities by exploring player- or randomly generated maps, running missions, learning spells, and working cooperatively with a friend.
Above: How to win a Chaos Reborn match against Julian Gollop: Randomly obtain the best deck ever. Turtle annoyingly behind 10 evil trees and six rats. Attack him with a fictional mount. (You’re welcome.)
GamesBeat: Did you start off by designing Chaos Reborn as a strategy game like the original and then add the other elements in? How did the concept of CR come together?
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Julian Gollop: I think the original idea was to take the original Chaos game as a starting point and add a bigger RPG aspect to it. Basically, I started from the beginning with the ending combination in mind.
The very first idea I had was that the game must feel very similar to the original Chaos in the way it works, with quick-playing tactical combat. It must [also] have an interesting, involving RPG aspect with good single-player exploration gameplay in it.
GamesBeat: Your original X-COM is infamous for being brutal in the early stages, especially at higher difficulty levels. This feels much more forgiving.
Gollop: It’s definitely more forgiving. I don’t want it to be very difficult.
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If you want a bigger challenge you can enter a higher-level [questing] realm, and if you want an easier challenge you can go to a low-level realm, but you need to make that choice as to what kind of level of challenge you want.
Similarly, our multiplayer matching system will try to match players of comparable ability. But I think for new players it will be a lot easier to get into than X-COM, for sure.
Above: Screens spell out the abilities of minion spells, like this hydra. The percent is the chance of success when you summon it.
GamesBeat: Was that a deliberate choice?
Gollop: Yeah, I think so.
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GamesBeat: Are you mellowing, or is it just a different approach?
Gollop: I guess—what I’ve always wanted to do is make turn-based strategy games more accessible to more players, to remove some of the intimidation that was usually associated with such games. In fact, even with RPGs, they can be quite intimidating in terms of difficulty as well. And to make it more accessible for players who might not be used to playing this style of game.
GamesBeat: What do you think will cause RPG players to enjoy the strategy, and strategy players to enjoy the RPG?
Gollop: If you’re more of a traditional RPG player, which is about building your character and your equipment, then you need to invest in the strategy and preparing for battle. That’s still a fundamental part of RPG games.
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I think all RPG games have an element of strategy to them. They give you choice in what you can do. That’s what strategy games are all about. There’s no one single way to victory. There’s no single way to prepare your spell deck and your weapons. There may be different ways to tackle different types of enemies.
For strategy players to enjoy the RPG, well, if they go through the RPG system, it gives them greater choice, more strategic options to experiment and play with.
Above: A character in Chaos Reborn.
GamesBeat: Do you think they’re likely to see that as enjoyable gameplay in its own right or more as a stepping stone to the part they really enjoy?
Gollop: It’s difficult to say. You could, for example, play the game completely focused on multiplayer and ignore the realm exploration. You’d still be able to level up your character. You’d still be able to acquire equipment. But it would be less focused on the exploration side.
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And then maybe other players who are much more into the RPG side, who enjoy exploring the realms and the little stories that you get there, finding interesting things, maybe even just collecting rare items that other people don’t have — there’s scope for different styles of play there.
But because they’re all interlinked, you can’t completely exclude one or the other. You can’t completely ignore the strategy or the RPG.
GamesBeat: And you’re always a wizard?
Gollop: Yeah, you’re always a wizard. There are three basic types of body gear. That determines your style of play. There’s the heroic type. Heroic just means that you’re probably going to be a bit more involved in combat as a wizard, with swords and bows and riding mounts and stuff.
Then you have the vigilant type. Vigilant is a more cautious and defensive wizard, more well defended but not so agile. Finally you have the arcane type, which is relatively weak in close combat and defense, but has more magic power. It’s more focused on the magic attack types of spells.
Above: Level up and you, too, can be a wizard king.
GamesBeat: Can you describe the additional elements you plan to add to the game?
Gollop: As you know, [right now] you have a wizard with a staff, and some randomly allocated pieces of equipment. You have completely randomly allocated spells.
The next major step is quite a comprehensive equipment system. Your wizard will be able to choose body gear and choose a staff and be able to acquire this body gear and staffs by exploring in realms and fighting in battles. You’ll then be able to equip these staffs with talismans, which are special magical artifacts that give you special powers.
You can find a piece of equipment which is very low level and you can level it up. It builds its powers and unlocks talisman slots and you can put more talismans in it.
You might be able to find higher-level equipment.
You can combine equipment to build more rare types of equipment. If you have three of the same type you can combine them and use them to forge another piece of equipment, for example.
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.
GamesBeat: How long do you expect the realm exploration levels to last?
Gollop: It’s a bit difficult to say yet. I hope you’ll be able to play through a realm in an evening, maybe about three hours, but they will vary a bit. Some may be bigger than others. You might make it through a series of five or six battles against wizard lords, for example, and then a final battle against the king.
GamesBeat: There’s only one type of randomly generated battle map in the game now. What are you expecting to add later?
Gollop: There will be nine different environment types. There will be different pickups you can find there, different treasures you’ll be able to find. All those are connected with the RPG exploration nodes, so you’ll have forests, mountains, ruins, citadels, something called mana fluxes. The wizard king’s palace itself, you’ll fight in that ultimately. There are different environments in the maps.
Above: Concept art of a mana flux area.
GamesBeat: Will the quests and RPG elements also be turn-based?
Gollop: Yes.
GamesBeat: How do asynchronous matches work?
Gollop: Players can do matches like chess, sending moves [by email] when they have a chance. If you click on the match play option, you have a choice between asynchronous or live games. You then get a list of asynchronous games that you can play. You can play while offline.
GamesBeat: Can you talk a bit about your vision for implementing guilds and item trading?
Gollop: The short answer is that I haven’t quite decided yet. Certainly within a guild you’ll be able to trade and exchange items. You’ll have a little guild shop or guild house.
You’ll probably be able to do it universally as well, with other players. But we have to see about how to manage the game economy. That’s quite difficult, once you allow trading. Of course there will be a currency in the game as well.
The main thing is to allow members of guilds or players who have friends to exchange items and help each other out.
I would not like it to be a majorly exploitative type of trading system, but if the game is popular, it will happen. So I can’t really say more than that, except that I don’t want it to completely take over the game by any means. The game economy has to be managed for the benefit of the gameplay and the players as a whole, not just the ones who are making it rich.
GamesBeat: I’m thinking of the Diablo real-money auction house.
Gollop: Yeah. But they even have problems with the non-money auctions. There are many interesting issues there that we’ll have to deal with.
Above: Fans of Gollop’s original Chaos game will enjoy the encore appearance of those Gooey Blobs.
GamesBeat: What are you thinking about as far as leaderboards or modes for the single- or dual-player multiplayer?
Gollop: There will be a leaderboard ranking system. We haven’t completely sorted out how it will be implemented yet.
There will be more than one multiplayer game mode. The standard mode is where you can use your equipment from the realm exploration and equip your wizard with leveled-up equipment.
There’s also a couple of modes for players who might want a more balanced and competitive approach. There’s the symmetrical mode, which means that each player is given a random selection of spells and equipment and they have to discard some. Then they go into battle.
Finally, there’s the random wizard mode, which is much like the way it works at the moment. You just have a random battle with random equipment and random spells. Those are the three multiplayer modes.
