X-COM Creator's Chaos Reborn Is Born This Month
Post-release support promised
I've started to feel a degree of sadness when games leave early access and embrace a full release. It's like watching your kids get older and go to college - there's that point where, one day, their growing up is done. You know who they're going to be. There's pride, sure, but all the what-ifs are over and done with. Julian Gollop's turn-based wizard-battler Chaos Reborn [official site] (currently on Steam Early Access), for instance, is no longer a great unknown - the X-COM co-creator's latest (and first independent) game will be released on Steam at the end of the month. It's not that its journey is over, but the guessing and hoping stage is. That great question which has floated around PC parts for years - what would it be like if Julian Gollop made a new game? - is answered.
Version 1.0 launches on October 26th, after some 18 months of development. By Gollop's own admission, not everything promised in the Kickstarter pitch is in there yet, but "we will be adding these features in the first 2 months after release." My own experiences of various beta versions have suggested a game which is perhaps uncommonly on track to meet its initial, eminently realistic promises, so for now I'm happy to take him at his word there.
Apparently v1.0 "will be focused on new players, so there will be an extensive tutorial and an upgraded interface. The Wizard Lord and Wizard King roles will be working at launch, and you will find new realms to explore as the kings create them." I haven't looked in on Chaos Reborn for a few months, so I don't know how fleshed out the singleplayer campaign aspect of it is now. It was definitely onto something last time I looked, though felt a little barebones.
It's primarily a multiplayer game of course, and new spells and modes are promised post-launch in the hope of keeping that interesting.
I don't know how well these sorts of things work, but there's a Thunderclap campaign you can join in with if you're keen that Chaos Reborn does well. Basically it auto-posts a message about the game to your Twitter, Facebook and/or Tumblr come release day, if you so wish. See here:
Hurrah for games successfully getting made! And now please make a spiritual X-COM sequel.