Chaotic Era Review (PC) – Chaos Weary
Chaotic Era is an action strategy title that’s as quirky as it is confusing. Its most striking element is its visual flair, mixing a black-and-white palette with fluid, shadowy designs and a sonar, echo-like appearance. While it’s visually arresting however, the gameplay is as straightforward as quantum mechanics and the interface leaves a lot to be desired.
My time spent attempting to understand Chaotic Era was a decidedly mixed bag as a result. “Attempting to understand” it is probably the most apt description. From deciphering the visual indicators, to the lack of proper tutorialisation and the unclear rules of engagement, everything about this game is a mystery. I grappled through multiple levels on both sides and still couldn’t really tell you how it all works.
Maybe that was the intention, but it makes Chaotic Era a difficult title to enjoy, and recommend, as a consequence of its obtuse nature.
Chaos Reigns
The first mission of each faction’s campaign gives you the chance to learn the ropes of the very bare minimum. I fired up the human side (aliens are the other) and almost immediately, I was lost. You have a central base, you select tiles around the base to expand your field of view. Apparently, you also collect resources from them, but only if you manually select them? I’m not sure. You probably won’t be either.
Accruing tiles provides you codex points for passive buffs, for example, higher field of view or increased yield of resources. It also provides you with tech points, which you invest for various upgrades to units and buildings. While the upgrades sounded important, I couldn’t really tell you how best to use them. Matches in the campaign progress so rapidly you barely have a chance to comprehend them before you’ve either died or won.
Instead, I found myself hoovering up some tiles, slamming all codex and tech points and then just going for the jugular. There’s a mix of defensive and offensive buildings you can produce by right-clicking tiles. The autoturrets for instance, are rather handy in the event of an alien assault. Lose your production buildings, and it’s basically game over.
The biggest issue I have with the formula is the pace of every encounter. Due to the random generation every time you restart, you can literally start a level with the enemies already triggering into attack. Sometimes you’ll get a couple minutes to set up, other times you’ll be devoured like a silver-plattered extraterrestrial snack. I lost often and the forfeit button got a lot of use, and I can’t say it was a good thing.
Era in Judgement
My successive number of failures mainly derived from two key systems in Chaotic Era: controlling your units and the interface itself. Instead of your typical RTS, you don’t individually command your vehicles or weapons of war. Instead, you select rally points, with which you hope and pray your units will obey. Often times, they don’t, willfully wandering off into nowhere just as a massive party of aliens arrives on your doorstep.
It’s an inelegant mechanic and I wasn’t a fan. When one mission required me to “locate the vessel” after having destroyed the enemy faction, I ran out of time because my units wasted so much time ignoring the rally points. At its worst, it’s infuriating. However, when they do respect your command, it can be a fulfilling experience. As the electricity flows and the explosions come thick and fast, the intensity of the sound design and the colour scheme become an arresting, strange symphony.
Sadly, you’ll spend much more time battling with the interface and the controls than you will the actual aliens or humans you’re supposed to be fighting. Almost every menu button was ever so slightly out of sync, making it arduous to navigate important pop-ups in real-time. I had one instance of a screen locking up on me entirely too, resulting in the destruction of my base.
These issues are compounded by how defeat can occur so quickly. One alien is all it takes to completely wipe out an outpost, owing to how they explode on death, destroying everything. For me, it felt like a set of ideas that just didn’t quite mesh together like the vision had in mind. Less direct controls can work, but only when the systems themselves function as intended, which doesn’t feel like the case in Chaotic Era. It lives up to its name in terms of the chaos though, which may be some small mercy.
Non-Redemption Era
I do want to say, there were more than a few times I found myself overlooking Chaotic Era’s flaws (against my better judgement) and having some fun. In one mission, I managed to obliterate the entire enemy faction by blitzing their units in their base, causing a massive chain reaction of explosions which wiped them out quicker than the dodo. Don’t know if that’s supposed to happen, but it was fun.
Moreover, I suspect that if you take the time to really understand this game on a foundational level, there’s potentially something more to it. After about three hours of carelessly floundering around in the dark, I contended that this simply wouldn’t be the case for me. Chaotic Era is just a little too firmly in the realm of obtuse and obstructive for my taste.
To my own credit, the technical performance didn’t do the game any favours, either. From crashing on me four times, to loading saves de-spawning the map and the menus glitching out, Chaotic Era has rougher edges than a rusted knife. It also decided it simply wouldn’t run in full-screen mode anymore, which was strange. No option to fix this in the settings and I couldn’t find a workaround either, unfortunately.
So, while there’s two campaigns of sorts (five levels each for human and alien factions) and a fully-fledged multiplayer offering, it’s challenging to be able to recommend the game as a whole. There’s a very, very small, niche audience this will appeal to, but it’s leaner than the population of my home island. Even as a fan of strategy games, Chaotic Era made a poor first impression and never truly overcame it.
A Chaotic Experience
I will applaud Chaotic Era for its efforts, in that it’s like nothing else I’ve ever played. There’s a unique quality to its strategy gameplay mechanics, while its visuals and sound design are ethereal and strange, yet compelling. If it had the supporting columns to hold up its ideas, it’d be a game worth trying out.
In its present form however, I find it difficult to encourage you to take the plunge. With a bit more time and player feedback to improve its performance and interface issues, it should become a more polished version of itself. My concern is that its obstructive approach and obscure style won’t endear it to many, and there’s not much that can be done to salvage that.
Even so, I’ve spent hours of my time in many worse ways than this. Chaotic Era won’t be in any of my lists for best quality or most stable games this year, but in all likelihood, it will be one of the most unique and memorable. Much like in Arrival, making contact with an alien species is spellbinding and panic-inducing in equal measure, which is exactly the mix of emotions Chaotic Era had me going through.
As one of the most unique video games and individually arresting visual styles I’ve come across this year, Chaotic Era comes unstuck thanks to its abstract approach to gameplay systems, poor performance problems and a lack clear, functioning mechanics. In these times of chaos, there’s only so much obscurity that can be tolerated, before it just becomes a dysfunctional era.
Chaotic Era is available on July 18th on PC via Steam (review platform).
Developer: Bobby Technology
Publisher: Bobby Technology
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.
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