Total Chaos
is a series of simple turn based strategy game / card game / board games for the Amiga. They were written by James Conwell and a group of developers known as Team Chaos.
Total Chaos: Battle at the Frontier of Time
was released in 2003 [1] onto Aminet [2].
Total Chaos: The Newbie Edition
was first released in December, 2006 onto Aminet [3].
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TOTAL CHAOS TICKETS
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Gameplay
In
Total Chaos
, players take the role of
wizards who battle to be the 'last wizard standing' by eliminating all the enemy wizards and any independent monsters. The game allows up to eight players, any of whom can be human or computer controlled, as individuals or as teams.
Computer controlled wizards can be assigned a level of 1 to 9, however this only affects the cards (spells) they are dealt at the start of the game. Computer controlled wizards may be assigned to a human player's team whereby they will cast beneficial spells upon the human controlled wizard and his creations.
Each turn, a player may select and play a card, move and attack with his creatures and wizard, then shoot with any creatures that have ranged attacks. If the
Texas Trash'em
gameplay rule is active then each player must discard one card after selecting one to play.
The game takes place on a 17 x 14
tiled playing field. Creatures move square at a time (with some exceptions) up to their movement value, attacking by moving into an enemy unit. Attacking creatures are not harmed; only the defender takes damage, based attacker's Combat statistic. If the defending creature dies then the attacker moves into its square.
If a wizard is destroyed, all his creations immediately go into a deep coma. If the
Capture Enemy Creatures
option is active, the killer instead captures control of all creations owned by the destroyed wizard; they remain fully awake and are immediately available for movement and combat.
The last team remaining is the winner. Since a wizard is the heart of its team, if one is destroyed its team is taken out of play. The last wizard left with health is essentially the winner.
Spells
At the start of the game, each wizard is dealt a random selection of cards, representing spells. Some cards are rarer than others; some can only be obtained as a bonus spell, acquired by killing powerful monsters, or by meditating inside certain buildings.
Spells chosen in
Total Chaos
will never fail to be cast, although a small number of spells may still fail due to the resistance of the target.
Creature spells
Creature spells summon mundane animals or fantastic monsters that fight for the wizards. With a few exceptions (
vulture
and
aerial servant
), they are summoned adjacent to the wizard.
A creature may have one or more special attributes:
- Flying
creatures such as bats, dragons, manticores, gryphons and vultures, eagles. Flying creatures can move their full distance in one step, allowing them to bypass intervening objects and creatures; this also allows them to attack from a distance.
- Undead
creatures such as skeletons, spectres, wraiths and zombies can only be attacked by other undead creatures or by spells and magic weapons. Dead creatures that have been raised with the raise dead
spell also become undead.
- Mountable
creatures such as centaurs, horses, unicorns, nightmares and pegasus can be ridden by wizards. Any attack against the wizard and mount combination is directed at the mount, which must be killed before the wizard can be affected.
- Shooting
creatures have ranged attacks, available after they move. This may represent bows (centaurs and elves), dragons breath, magic bolts (ogre mages) or even cows (Conwell's Cow Catapult). Most shooters require line of sight but some function as artillery.
Some flags are unique to
Total Chaos
:
- Trampling
creatures such as elephants, rhinoceros and rhinosaur can damage enemies adjacent to their target.
- Scavenging
creatures such as arctic kitty wolves, arctic wolves, dire wolves and vultures are able to replenish their life points by scavenging the bodies of dead monsters.
- Exophagy
creatures such as vampires can suck the life force out of enemy units during the act of attacking. Thus the exophagy creature's life force increases when attacking.
Other special creature qualities include:
- Elementals
: When an Earth, Air, Fire or Water elemental dies, it leaves behind an earthquake, vortex, fire or flood respectively.
- Goblin bomb
s death triggers an explosion, dealing damage to all adjacent squares.
- Hidden horror
looks like a sweet innocent little halfling but upon its death it becomes a ferocious red dragon.
- Promotable creatures
'level up' when they accrue enough kills; ogres, for example, can become ogre warriors or ogre assassins.
- Artifact creatures
inherently belong to whomever has the most adjacent units, thus they can be captured and used in one's own army by obtaining adjacent numerical superiorty. One example is Conwell's Cow Catapult which needs nearby friendly creatures to be operated. Artifact Daleks, Artifact Bolters, Artifact Robots and Artifact Stone Golems are other artifacts creatures.
Creatures have statistics which govern how effective they are at attacking and how much damage they can take, move ratings which control how many squares they can move per turn, maneuver ratings which determine how easily a creature can break off combat and magic resistance for defense against magical assaults. There are numerous other statistics and the computer deals with them transparently so as not to unduly burden the player with numbers.
Object spells
- Magic Wood
creates eight trees which can be entered by any wizard to receive protection and a bonus spell after a random number of turns.
- Shadow Wood
creates eight trees which may attack adjacent enemies, and may harm undead opponents.
- Walls
can be used to block movement and ranged attacks.
- Dark citadels
and Magic castles
last for a random number of turns. When a wizard is inside one of these buildings they cannot be attacked until the building is destroyed. They grant bonus spells in the same way that Magic Woods do.
Growth spells
Growth spells, once cast, can never be controlled by anyone. They divide, multiply and die randomly on their own accord such as Gooey Blob and Magic Fire.
- Green Slime
is similar to Gooey Blob but not so unfriendly.
- Orange Jelly
is very similar to Green Slime except it has a very high growth rate and much less hitpoints.
- Fire
and Flood
spread randomly and attack anything, even their own team.
- Violet Fungi
has a very slow growth rate unless planted on top of a corpse. It does not cover up monsters the way slimes and jellies and blobs do and does not attack in the way Fire does. Violet Fungi never dies randomly as other growths do, they must instead be killed outright. The Violet Fungi attacks all adjacent enemies at the end of each turn.
- Earthquake
grows very slowly and is limited to horizontal or vertical growth. When it grows it destroys anything in its path.
Other spells
In addition to summonings,
Total Chaos
includes other spells, such as:
- Offensive spells: examples include Hand Grenade
, an area effect attack; Magic Bolt
, a direct attack requiring line of sight; Dark Power
and Justice
, may destroy a creatures with weak magic resistance; Brain Drain
attacks a target's brainpower statistic.
- Wizard spells, which effect only the casting wizard. Examples include Magic Sword
and Magic Bow
which improve a wizard's combat rating; Magic Wings
allows a wizard to fly; various Shield
spells to protect the wizard from specific kinds of attack; Reflector
is a counter to incoming shots.
- Defensive spells such as Armour
, Magic Shield
and Brain Boost
allows a wizard to protect his creatures.
- Necromancy spells include Raise dead
, which transforms a corpse into an undead
creature; Resurrection
transforms a corpse into a living creature.
- Charm spells include Subversion
, which attempts to steal another wizard's creature; Charm
attempts to charm all objects on the board.
- Micellaneous spells include the extremely rare Turmoil
which randomizes all creature and object positions; Bury
removes corpses from play; Wrath of God
kills all creatures on the board except wizards.
Critical response
The
Total Chaos
games were highlighted in
Retro Gamer
magazine, in which they were described as an updated version of the ZX Spectrum game
Chaos
.
[4] "Although
Total Chaos
retains the top-down view of the original, it introduces new gameplay additions, additional spells and varied battlefields." Retro Gamer concluded "Shame it's not on the PC, as this is one of the best updates around."
References
- Total Chaos: Battle at the Frontier of Time - HOL Amiga database
- http://aminet.net/package/game/misc/TotalChaosAGA
- Aminet - game/strat/TotalChaosAGAr6.lha
- "Creating Chaos"