Indie Calendar - Chaos Reborn

Chaos Reborn first came onto our radar earlier this year, when Julian Gollop - the creator of the original XCOM series - launched a Kickstarter campaign for the game, itself another strategy classic from his back-catalogue.

Gollop explained to us that revisiting the game "is really scratching a 30 year old itch - to remake one of my early Spectrum 48k games, originally released as Chaos: The Battle of Wizards by Games Workshop in 1985." There was obviously some unfinished business.

The appetite was also there among gamers to see it (re)made, as the campaign for this proposed reboot was successful. During that initial push for funding we got in touch, at which point we got our hands on an early build of the game, played a few rounds with Julian himself (and were roundly beaten as you might expect), and came away looking forward to a return visit.

So now it seems that finally scratching that itch is closer than ever for Gollop and his team, after it was announced very recently that the game is heading to Steam Early Access. The final release is some months off, but still the doors are about to open to the wider public, and we're going to get a much clearer idea of what awaits inside.

But what was it in the first place that inspired the developer to revisit his old game and rework it? Why did he have a hankering for this particular title?

"It just has that purity and simplicity of game design, but with the remarkable capacity to generate unique and memorable experiences with each game. I am also fond of it because it was a great multiplayer game at its core - although it was difficult to manage with players have to shared the rubber keyed speccy turn by turn. My plan for Chaos Reborn is to take this addictive and simple game design into new territory - with two major prongs in the fork - firstly an extensive single player RPG experience using both procedurally generated and player created content, and secondly to develop social structures for the game with guilds, social ranks and trading."

Gollop's personal story is an interesting one. After years of tinkering with the XCOM formula he eventually ended up working for Ubisoft. His work on the Assassin's Creed franchise is perhaps atypical, although Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, a 3DS strategy game that proved a cult hit, is far more his style.

"After working on relatively large projects at Ubisoft (such as Assassin's Creed III: Liberation) I had a hankering to get back to Indie development," he told us. "This is something I am used to, although it wasn't called indie gaming back in the 1980s."

"However, one thing we have now, but I didn't have then, is a direct relationship to the players through the internet - forums, and social media and so on. And this is really great, albeit stressful at times. Going through Kickstarter and then Steam Early Access really encourages this kind of development, where the player community is quite involved in the games development."

Which brings us back to today and Chaos Reborn, the game that Gollop and his new team have been working on since his departure from Ubisoft.

"I formed Snapshot Games Inc. with my business partner, David Kaye (who runs Gaming Insiders). David was a big fan of my early games and encouraged me to get a studio up and running. I set up a studio in Sofia, Bulgaria where I live - and there are currently 6 of us working full time on Chaos Reborn with quite a few freelancers contributing."

He continued: "They are a talented bunch - but it takes a lot of time and effort to build a team, especially with few resources. Our road map is to create a series of releases for Chaos Reborn up to our launch next summer. There are some interesting innovations coming up - especially with procedural generation - so it will be exciting to see the game unfold beyond the arena tactical battles we have now."

As we stated earlier, Chaos Reborn is making its way onto Steam Early Access later this month (on December 9). We're looking forward to getting involved once again, and taking part in some exciting turn-based fantasy battles (and maybe even winning a few this time). It certainly looks a lot better than it did the last time we saw it, and even back then it was clear that was potential. We'll find out soon enough whether that potential has been realised.

Gamereactor's Indie Calendar.