As a person fresh to Chaos Reborn missed the spectrum version went from ZX81 to CPC to many other systems etc …, but enjoyed many turn based strategy RPG’s, dungeon master, Black Crypt, and most especially realmz on the Mac which was a very amped up version. I note an interesting difference with games of today and games of yesterday. Many games in the past had no shame in using a large propertion of the screen for game interface, thinking about this the other day, obviously currently the trend is for making the interface as invisible as possible ? but when I look at the sophistication of Realmz’es gameplay I can clearly see that there are many kinds of games that are not possible without an extensive, sophisticated yet easy to use – ‘persistent interface’ from which to control the game. The game play area in realmz itself was perhaps 33-40% of the screen itself. It might be worth going against the trend to hide the interface or multipage interfaces my greatest bugbear, on modern games (example godus) and accept that interfaces and good ones that remain persistent enable some complex and satisfying un-interupted gameplay not possible with half the time hidden interfaces, if one looks at hearthstone for instance everything happens on a single screen from an actual combat gameplay perspective and I think that somehow keeps the game engaging and enhances a sense fun and focus.

On my 27″ screen theres plenty of real estate to have a persistent interface with icons for turn and draw next to each spell in the list and a count of how many turn and draws one can do in a game ? maybe better indicators to show alignment swing.

In my opinion its possible to make simple games that are a great deal more fun to play than overly complex games, giant 3d mmo’s can be less fun to play than say the first version of plants v zombies for instance. Obviously Chaos Reborn is having to play sensitively with the philosophy of a game that is seminal in the minds of many, but rpg game mechanics even tile and turn based game mechanics evolved allot after chaos reborn, I guess its going to be a delicate balance to add additional elements without ruining the connection with the original game I look forward to see how it evolves.