Lords of Chaos and Chaos Reborn

I spent a little time in the last couple of weeks playing 'Lords of Chaos'. It's the first time I have played it in 22 years and it was a most interesting experience. I first tried the Spectrum version, but then settled on the Atari ST version. Here are the positive points:

• The 'collect-em-up' aspect of the game is quite compelling. There is a lot of exploration and gathering to do, with a lot of different types of things to collect, most of which are potentially useful. It is especially delightful to find keys and chests, and ultimately the treasure you are seeking to win the game.
• There are almost always important decisions to be made every turn, with a lot of different possibilities to consider. It is rarely boring because of this.
• The vision system works well. Flying creatures have a great scouting ability, but not for enemy creatures hidden in forests and grass. The use of invisibility makes for interesting game play with thievery and surprise attacks. Pixies are cool.
• The portal system is a neat way for completing the game. When it appears, the tension certainly ratchets up a few notches. A confrontation with the enemy wizards is most likely during this period, and you are often faced with the dilemma of going for the portal or trying to find that last bit of treasure before it closes.
• The victory conditions make the game more interesting. It is not actually necessary to kill any enemy wizards to win the game. The use of victory points system is cool, because you have two main ways to get them - killing creatures and finding treasure. There is always some objective for you in every turn.
• The RPG aspect of the game works pretty well. You are not just trying to win a battle but maximise your experience points to build your wizard for the next encounter. Improving your wizard is also quite a compelling aspect to the game.
• There are a few interesting puzzles which often benefit from certain spells. It makes for an interesting adventure game, not just a combat game.

Now for a few downsides:

• The pace of the game is very slow. It definitely works better as a single player game because of this. Ideally there should have been a few mutliplayer only maps which are smaller, and specially designed for quick and brutal play.
• The logistics of the game can be overwhelming. It is often difficult to remember which creature is carrying what. There is just too much stuff to manage. Preparing potions is a time consuming and fiddly process.
• The more interesting spells are rarely used. There is too much emphasis on creatures and buffing them up with potions and enchanted weapons.
• Although there are a lot of creature spells, there is not much interesting variety between them. You certainly don't need them all. Some more interesting special abilities for creatures could have made things a bit more interesting.
• The overwhelming choice of spells is not good for novice players. You need to design your wizard by choosing a bunch of spells from a big long list without knowing whats good or useful for your first adventure. The RPG aspect of the game could have worked a lot better by introducing things more gradually.
• The AI can't really cope with the complexity of the game, which is probably not surprising. From this point of view, multiplayer games should be more interesting - if you have the time and patience to play them.
• The stamina stat is really annoying. Your creatures run out of stamina, and they are going at half-puff for most the the rest of their existence. It just slows things down.

Overall, I would have to conclude that Lords of Chaos is a game struggling under the weight of its own ambition. Good, but not great.

For the single-player 'Kindoms of Chaos' mode in Chaos Reborn I do want to recreate some of the flavour of 'Lords of Chaos' and use some of its better aspects. So here are a few proposals:

• There will be an exploration element at the kingdom level. You start in a randomly generated game world, consisting of hexes, where each hex represents an environment type. You can only see hexes adjacent to hexes you have already visited, so the world is gradually revealed to you as you explore. When you enter an enemy controlled hex, a battle area is generated an you will fight an enemy wizard. Some hexes may have helpful structures in them to help you in your quest to kill the Chaos King (e.g. a tower that enables you to see further, a wizard tower which acts as a respawning location).
• Each battle will have a portal system, as in LoC. If the enemy wizard escapes through the portal he will move to another region in the game world. If your wizard escapes through the portal you return to your hex in the kingdom map with any artefacts you recovered. If you kill the enemy wizard, you gain control of that kingdom hex. If you are killed by the enemy wizard you return to the nearest friendly wizard tower in the kingdom map without any artefacts from the battle.
• There will be artefacts in the game, but only your wizard has an inventory. Creatures with hands may gather things for you, but they go straight to your wizard (as in Magic & Mayhem). Your wizard can  have in use one item from his inventory. Changing an item in battle requires using the wizard’s action for that turn.
• The RPG system is based on experience points which are gained for killing enemy creatures, killing enemy wizards, casting spells and collecting treasure. You spend experience points on learning new spells from any spell books you have found, and on improving your wizard’s attributes (spell list size, casting ability, attack, defence, magic resistance).
• Your wizard's spell library consists of all the spells learned from spell books. Your wizards spell memory is the number of spells that may be taken into battle. You can choose which spells to take into battle from your spell library, up to the spell memory limit.
• The types of artefact include:
• Spell Books - allow you to learn a spell. You can learn a spell multiple times, in which case you may use multiple versions of it in battle.
• Spell scrolls - add a spell to your spell list for this battle only.
• Wands - increase your chance of casting spells (limited number of uses). Wands may be specialised (e.g. 'Wand of Chaos' only benefits chaos spells).
• Orbs - allow casting of a particular spell, but has a limited number of uses.
• Amulets - provide defence bonus and/or magic resistance bonus. Also has limited uses based on the number of times the effect is used.
• Treasure - different types, worth varying amounts of experience points
• Effect scrolls - as soon as they are read, generate some particular effect in the arena e.g. summon portal,  
• Kingdom artefacts - some artefacts may have an effect at the kingdom level - e.g. teleport keys.

There are clearly more details to be filled in here, particularly how to make the kingdom exploration part both interesting and tactical. However, I think this is a start.

Oh yes - Happy new year everyone! Let's hope 2013 will be both productive and chaotic!