CHAOS… was a 1985 wizard-dueling turn-based strategy game that challenged the type of
games a computer could do as well if not better than on a tabletop.
Inspired by a card game British designer Julian Gollop penned years earlier, and Warlock,
an early Games Workshop card game, it was one of the great strategy classics of the
dawn of the computer gaming age.
Julian's desire to revisit his original spell-slinging battle game never ceased.
Its most obvious revival was Chaos Reborn, successfully crowdfunded in 2014.
It was a true-to-form remake of the original game, down to the stylized monster designs
and spells.
But this wasn't the first time Julian sought to remake his fantasy classic.
In fact, it wasn't even the second.
Five years after making Chaos, Julian and his team at Mythos Games made Lords of Chaos;
a more graphical interpretation of his original design, with additional role-playing game
elements and story.
Yet there was another attempt that seems to have fallen off the pages of gaming history:
An underexposed re-imagining of Chaos some 13 years after its original release.
Trying new technology, shedding turn-based combat, and making some sweeping changes to
the formula, I present to you, the fantastic experiment known as Magic & Mayhem.
Julian Gollop was an avid tabletop strategy game fan.
Making video games as early as high school, and after moving from a small town in Essex
to London to learn economics at a university, he spent more time devoted to his game-making
passion than to schooling.
Julian wrote Chaos: The Battle of Wizards for the ZX Spectrum, a UK-centric rival of
the Commodore 64.
The game was first published by Games Workshop, and this title single-handedly set the course
of events that would put down Gollop as one of the masters of strategy computer games.
Chaos pitted two or more wizards against eachother in an empty arena.
Each turn began with choosing a spell to cast—either summoning a creature, or damaging, debuffing
or enhancing an existing one—followed by a movement and attack phase.
If you're familiar with turn-based combat, you'd probably guess that there are ranged
creatures, fast creatures, flying creatures, etc., but the twist here is how straightforward
yet unpredictable this game was designed to be.
Every creature, whether a rat, wizard or mighty dragon, dies in a single hit.
All attacks are a percentage chance to succeed, improved or lowered based on the strength
of the attack versus the target's defense.
This can lead to incredible moments where you manage to sneak a weaker creature up to
an enemy wizard and miraculously defeat them first try, only to later miss after miss with
your massive club-wielding giant.
On one hand, taking squares and eliminating enemies without complicated stat sheets is
simple and elegant like a game of Chess.
On the other, it's highly reliant on chance and calculated risk.
Nothing is guaranteed in Chaos, and its addictive Russian roulette-style combat kept players
repeatedly hitting that 'replay' button back in 1985.
Playing a game today that is as as old as myself, I wasn't expecting much of a looker,
and…it isn't.
What it IS though is a tight strategy game that offers imaginative randomity-heavy combat
with a variety of spells that will keep you guessing.
Though Julian Gollop is most known as the creator of the revered X-COM series, the legendary
turn-based strategy games that inspired a swath of game classics ranging from Fallout
to Diablo.
Bringing tactics and strategy to a modern world with gun squads and alien invaders was
an instant hit and spawned imitations for decades to come.
MicroProse's sequel, X-COM: Terror From the Deep sent players to the depths of the ocean,
but otherwise changed relatively little of the original gameplay.
Julian and his team were rehired for the third entry in the series, X-COM: Apocalypse, which
made many sweeping changes like higher resolution graphics, optional realtime combat and many
more levels of elevation; the latter two causing strain on the series' formula and tech behind
it.
After the long and troubled development of Apocalypse, Julian and his crew at Mythos
decided to try a new take on his Chaos game concept.
Lacking the license to the original title, they set out with a new name, setting and
real-time mechanics.
Magic & Mayhem was picked up by publisher Virgin Interactive and the journey through
this inspired yet flawed game began.
What makes Magic & Mayhem stand out from Chaos' multiple remakes and iterations is its strong
sense of personality; few titles have the mix of old and new artistry stitched throughout
its designs as this game does.
You are immediately treated to a cinematic story introduction of a wizard's apprentice,
who returns to his master's tower only to find it hastily abandoned.
This intro showcases exceptional Ray Harryhausen-esque claymation, like something out of Jason and
the Argonauts or Clash of the Titans—likely inspirations.
This deliberate art direction made it one of the few games to use claymation models
for the game's units.
This gives Magic & Mayhem an unmistakable look and feel.
The game's world and story is told over three fantasized versions of historic Europe.
Albion, with Druids wandering through gentle rivers dividing Celtic plains.
Ancient Greece, with mythological figures like Jason and the Golden Fleece.
And eventually to the conflicts of Merlin, Morded and King Arthur in the realm of Avalon.
Each have their own architecture, style and use of musical instruments, with Irish folk
inspiration for Albion, stringed instruments for Greece, and more synth and modern music
for the Medieval world.
And the music, oh, the music.
Even from its more negative reviews, critics praised the game's unforgettable soundtrack.
Mythos hired the Afro Celt Sound System to imagine the game's unique soundscapes.
Mixing bagpipes, pennywhistles, West African influences, and even electronic accompaniment,
it was truly a marvel.
Each track was tuned to the three worlds, Albion, Greece and Avalon, and were executed
to such musical precision that I catch myself humming them even today.
The core of the gameplay is combat, with brief dialogue interludes.
You begin with a wizard as your starting unit, and should they perish, the game ends.
The casting chance mechanic of Chaos has been replaced with a traditional mana bar.
You can pick up consumable items and even one-off spells throughout your adventure,
but the bulk of the action will be ordering units around like a realtime strategy game
and casting spells.
Each spell has unique characteristics and uses.
There are simple attack spells like fireball, and the more powerful lightning.
Summoning creatures is vital, but is balanced by your unit cap.
A dozen elves have the same mana cost as a single griffin, but it would consume much
of your unit cap, so what you summon and when comes into play.
Mana is both a resource and a balancing act, and managing a posse of creatures is important
as your mana does not regenerate.
The search for Mana Sprites to consume and Places of Power to hold are a must.
How you defend and position yourself and your army to guard your mana sources is one of
the key strategies to the game.
You have a diversity of tactics and effects you can create: cast Lightning Storm around
a thatched village to burn them out of shelter; grow a Tangle Vine between you and another
wizard to escape their reach; devour multiple enemies in an ever-growing Gooey Blob; craft
healing or attack totems to protect your units and Places of Power, or just destroy a chunk
of the world with the awesome Apocalypse spell.
Flammability is so addictive in Magic & Mayhem.
Start a brush fire and watch it engulf an army.
Call lightning down on a tree and see it spread to a nearby shack.
Or flush out defenders by burning down their walls and defenses.
You can create cheaper illusions of creatures that intelligent units have a chance to disbelieve,
summon magic wings to take yourself or your army to the skies, or perhaps drop a field
of magic mist to disrupt and confuse your pursuers.
The game featured impressive physics to back up your awesome magic powers.
Damaging a rooftop can cause tiles to fall and hit creatures under its protection; levitating
an enemy into the air will eventually drop it from the sky and crush it based on weight
and fall distance, and area of effect spells can burst into a sphere rather than simply
a flat circle.
The game balances spell loadouts and ensures every match is different via the unique portmanteau
system.
You can assign spell ingredients to either Law, Neutral, or Chaos talismans, with one
of three spell options per ingredient.
Choosing between summoning a powerful creature, an enchantment or a form of healing makes
for interesting and challenging loadout building.
Magic & Mayhem features a sizable campaign with multiple difficulty levels, PVP multiplayer
over LAN and the internet, plus an offline bot mode, which pits the player against one
or more AI wizards.
Bots were my mainstay mode, jumping into one of the dozens of maps, trying new techniques,
spells and creatures.
The cliche idea that no two matches are alike is absolutely true here with such a wild and
powerful arsenal of abilities.
And as with many games by Mythos, the AI would recalibrate after each match and would try
to mix up its strategies to outwit your own.
It was these sorts of personal touches that made concept-before-product games so special.
It was from an era of inspiration, before game design settled into the comfortable normalcy
of standard genres.
After playing a demo back in 1999, I was ecstatic to try the final game, but then the delays
and confusing localization emerged.
First was the unusual decision for Virgin Interactive US to rename the game to Duel:
The Mage Wars for the States, but when that same company was liquidated after Viacom sold
Virgin Interactive proper, the American publishing rights went to Bethesda Softworks, who decided
to retain the original title, Magic & Mayhem.
Their weak marketing, confusing title changes and delays likely influenced the underwhelming
sales for one of the most interesting strategy games that year, despite strong competition
in the likes of Alpha Centauri, Homeworld and Age of Empires II.
The translation of the precise, turn-based tactics of Chaos into a realtime RPG/strategy
hybrid was a risky move, but I think they rethought the rules and gameplay as well as
you could expect, though the game did suffer technologically.
Compared to the 3D-accelerated marvel Unreal, released a year prior, Magic & Mayhem's archaic
engine buckled at the seams with every move.
With gameplay locked at a glacial 10 frames per second, it can feel slow, clunky and unresponsive.
When a large area-of-effect spell with many physics and terrain interactions occurs, the
game stalls while it catches up.
The unfortunate drawback of 2-dimensional games is that common quality of life features
like rotating the camera and easily navigating verticality are problems.
Even with a layer-toggling button, it's difficult to track units inside buildings, second floors
or on rooftops.
A real shame since it has so many interactions with the Z-axis, hard-coded into the engine.
The game itself is pretty stable and I encountered few bugs and issues.
My biggest complaint with the game is at its core—the slow-turning 2D engine that struggles
to push out the dismal frame rate, and imperfect handling of elevation and building cutaways—issues
that would likely require a complete rewrite of the game's engine.
THE ART OF MAGIC To many's surprise, UK and US publishers
Virgin and Bethesda, respectively, rolled out a sequel to Magic & Mayhem in 2001—not
with a bang, but with a whimper.
Mythos Games did not return as developer of the sequel, and they canceled their unofficial
X-COM successor and shuttered their doors that same year.
Magic & Mayhem: The Art of Magic was given to newcomer Charybdis Limited, another UK
developer.
Regrettably, it's often a painful transition when a project moves from the minds behind
an idea to inheritors of the project.
In the case of The Art of Magic, despite receiving slightly more critical praise than the original,
it didn't transition as well as it could have.
This prequel was set in the same world as the original, though most characters do not
make an appearance.
In some ways it's a remake—with many of the same spell concepts and ideas—yet they
are noticeably different.
Though returning with a charming soundtrack, you'll still feel dismayed by its unpolished
look and feel.
Screens like the portmanteau seem stitched together and are considerably less intuitive.
Much of the user interface seems almost temporary, as if they intended to improve it later.
Creature animations were lackluster and the style and flavor of the original's beautiful
claymation fantasy world is gone.
In one of the most jarring cases of "Early 3D Sequel Syndrome" I've ever witnessed,
the uninspired art style treats you to bland, blurry textures and blocky trees cut off at
the stump.
A new engine was built from the ground up which had an unfixed camera and a smoother
framerate, yet the game mechanics suffered.
In spite of a true 3D game world, combat was flatter than ever.
Hills and elevation seem cosmetic, you can no longer order flying creatures to levitate
in place, and the complex environmental physics interactions are all but gone.
Terrain doesn't ignite, buildings don't disintegrate under stress, and even monster battles—though
smoother and more responsive—feel like random clusters of conflict, sometimes with little
danger or consequence if you outsmart the dull AI.
This new iteration failed to implement the same tactical layer of depth purported by
the original.
But more conspicuously, its heart and soul had faded away.
Magic & Mayhem's two-dimensional rendering engine was already dated at launch, yet its
code bordered on simulation.
The Art of Magic brought modern graphics, but limited development stripped the game
of its advanced gravity, material flammability and elevation mechanics.
Ironically, in upgrading the graphics technology and using a much more advanced engine, this
sequel devolved to a simpler, less innovative game, missing much of its personality and
what made the original so addictive.
The game's development scars were conspicuous.
If giving a complete engine rewrite to a new developer wasn't enough, Charybdis folded
mid-development, with much of the staff moving to Climax Nottingham, who completed the project.
Portrait art that looked like crude placeholders, an awful and cluttered user interface, missing
animations, and weak art direction made this game seem like it was led out to die.
In the early 2000's, when the real-time strategy bubble had popped and the genre was
on the ropes, Art of Magic at times seems like an unenthusiastic cash-in on brand recognition
(what there was of it anyway) by the publishers.
With Julian going back to the original turn-based Chaos design in the more recent Chaos Reborn—a
great strategy game which I enjoy quite a lot, yet is missing the unique voice and formulaic
experimentation that Magic & Mayhem attempted, with some success.
Magic & Mayhem is a flawed masterpiece, uncomfortably wedged between slow and methodical strategy,
and firmly in the technological canyon of 2D and 3D games.
A remake with a tighter engine, smoother gameplay, and an easier way to view and manipulate the
3-dimensional world, could be a modern-day classic.
It plays a lot like the massively successful Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games like
League of Legends, but with a lot more fun, environmental interaction and minion control.
It was rough at times, but its ideas still ring as sound as they did almost 20 whole
years ago.
Will these ideas be renewed in some form in the future?
We can hope.
But until then, let's do our best to ensure Magic & Mayhem's brilliance and promise
is not forgotten.
I hope you enjoyed this page from gaming history.
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A huge thanks from the bottom of my heart for all the support from my amazing Patrons.
And, as always, thank you for watching!
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