The Chaos Engine: Inspiration for all Steampunk fans (pic heavy)

[Cherno]

It just occured to me that one of the greatest run 'n' gun games of the early 90s makes for a great resource of all things Steampunk. Having played it numerous times in my youth 15 years ago, I'd like to present you one of the classics on the Amiga personal computer.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos_Engine :

The Chaos Engine is a top-down run and gun video game developed by the Bitmap Brothers and published by Renegade Software in 1993. The game is set in a steampunk Victorian age in which one or two players must battle the hostile creations of the titular Chaos Engine across four landscapes and ultimately defeat the Chaos Engine and its deranged inventor.

Plot

The setting is a steampunk Victorian era England. The backstory of the game has some similarities to William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's novel, The Difference Engine, also set in an alternate history Victorian age.

A time traveller on a reconnaissance mission from the distant future became stranded in England of the late 1800s, and his technology came into the hands of the Royal Society led by Baron Fortesque (based upon Charles Babbage), a grand inventor. Fortesque then retro engineered many of the futuristic contraptions, creating an entirely different, alternate timeline.

Baron Fortesque then succeeded in his greatest creation yet - the Chaos Engine - which was able to experiment with matter, and the very nature of space and time. Unfortunately for the rest of the proud kingdom, the Engine then proceeded to become sentient and captured and assimilated its creator, then began to change the countryside for the worse. Vile monsters and destructive automata appeared everywhere, and even prehistoric beasts were resurrected. Telegram wires connecting the British Isles to the European mainland are cut, and any ship attempting to enter a British port is attacked. The British Royal Family, along with members of Parliament and a large number of refugees manage to escape across the sea, bringing with them many tales of horror. The British Empire is left in tatters, and the world in economic and political chaos. This lures a number of mercenaries on a potentially rewarding quest to infiltrate the quarantined Britain, find the root of the problem and swiftly bring a full stop to it.

Some pictures to follow...

First, we have our cast of characters, all mercenaries of ambiguos ethics but nevertheless efficient in their respective fields:

Navvy, Thug, Mercenary, Brigand, Gentleman, Preacher



Some of their weapons...













From the intro: A giant dinosaur-like mutant creature is brought back into this world by the Chaos Engine:



Now for some in-game screenshots.

Fighting Lizardmen and Beetles in the woods/caves. An activated power node is visible (the golden column)





"The Workshops", here the setting becomes truly steampunkish (one level is even called "Steam!). The characters have to battle through narrow alleys, over rooftops, and dodge deadly bursts of steam and broken pipes crawling with brutish Neanderthals, mutant Kangaroos, automatited missile turrets and other evil creatures...

[Cherno]

Fortesque Mansion, the Baron's fortress. Full of traps and secret passages...





The sewers below the mansion. Weird machinations and automatons come to live as the soldiers of fortune try to shut down the evil machinery.



The end is near: The final boss, Baron Fortesque himself, encased in the machine that warped his mind and turned him into a monster In the end, he will reveal that it was him that lead the characters here so that they can destroy the Chaos Engine holding him captive and set him free at last... Unfortunately, the Engine was also his life support, so the only way for him to escape the horror is to die at last.





Lastly, a screenshot of the character selection and shop/training screen. Gotta love those graphics.





That's about it. I hope to inspire some of you and maybe we will even see a small tabletop project of it; It would be perfect as a coop-game using THW's Chain Reaction rules.

[Jonas]

Oh, I remember that game, I think it was quite fun to play through.

I never got very far though, didn't have an Amiga myself, so only played it a couple of times at a friends house.

[Donpimpom]

you can get the game from abandonware sites and use D-fend (a DOSpc emulator) to play it, I downloaded it and played a couple of games, really fast and furios, maybe too fast and too furious for me :-(
Runs really well on windows 7

you can get the game and the emulator here
www.myabandonware.com

Not sure if i'm breaking any forum rule, I hope not, it's an abandonware site nothing to do with piracy, but if the moderator consider wise to avoid that please trash this post.

[Pentaro]

Great graphics, as in every Bitmap Brothers game

[Smith]

I LOVED this game back in the day – and played it again not long ago on an emulator. I'm not sure that there would be any market for it, but a range of figures based on those characters would make me a very happy man!

[Cherno]

I played this game all the way through with a friend, coop style. It was relentlessly hard and we had to use cheats for unlimited lifes to make it through, somehow in my memory it wasn't that hard when I was a kid

The SNES version can be played online in a browser window here:

http://www.b227.eu/online_spiele/shooting_games/chaos_engine_de.html

Although I think the normal Amiga EGA graphics are superior

[FramFramson]

you can get the game from abandonware sites and use D-fend (a DOSpc emulator) to play it, I downloaded it and played a couple of games, really fast and furios, maybe too fast and too furious for me :-(
Runs really well on windows 7

you can get the game and the emulator here
www.myabandonware.com

Not sure if i'm breaking any forum rule, I hope not, it's an abandonware site nothing to do with piracy, but if the moderator consider wise to avoid that please trash this post.

DOSbox is another useful DOS emulator.