Realms of Chaos

Apogee made a lot of platformers during the early and mid ninties. The quality varied, but Realms of Chaos is a product of seasoned veterans, and it shows. Sure, the game wasn't developed by Apogee, but I suppose they had a hand in consulting the designers and programmers. Realms of Chaos is the story of two heroic siblings, a sword-fighting brother and a spell-casting sister, and their adventures through a varity of fantasy levels. I can't recall the exact plot, but like most platformers the focus isn't really on the story. What sets the game apart is the already mentioned variety and the fact that everything seems polished and well thought out. For example, there are five different difficulty settings, and the hardest one is still not impossible, and the easiest one is still challenging to a first time player. Even though some of the levels have mechanics like an auto-scrolling screen (and playfield) on higher difficulties, I never really felt frustrated. If I remeber correctly, you can also save the game anywhere, and you can switch player character at any point in the game (they have their own health counters, but if one of them dies the game is over). What else is there to say? Well, the graphics are colourful and have stood the test of time, being nice to look at even today. The music isn't bad either, when working with midies composers really had to compose; just adding ambient wind sounds to make the game "atmospheric" didn't do the trick back then!

Generic, very "me too" - answering to games of the time (80s/90s). Similar to the likes of Castlevania;more so - arcade hack & slash titles of old eg. Ghouls n Ghosts, Rastan Saga... What this lacks in personality, it makes up for in gameplay; with visceral, weighty combat, some simple but perfectly fine platform sections here and there and it's central mechanic:You play as 2 characters 1 at a time, and can switch them out simply, on-the-fly; a bloke with a sword who is powerful but can dish-out and take more damage... and a woman who (you guessed it) is agile; she can jump higher and uses multi-directional fireballs instead of a sword. Again, not exactly earth-shatteringly original and yet... I don't know, this game is simply good, honest, solid fun. It feels spot-on! -Gameplay: Sharp controls and solid combat and weighty feel. Bit fiddly on keyboard, but workable. -Level Design/Graphics: Nicely drawn. Again, generic (forest world, dungeon, marsh world). Big sprites and mostly good colour choice. Plenty variety; some linear with tricky enemies; others more sprawling. -Sound: The music is utterly forgettable. Sounds like some sort of medieval porno.The bloody, squelchy sound effects are great, though! -As generic as this is, it's clearly made with love by people who are gamers and understand what is so great about some of the games that inspired this. Lacking the true artistry and character of the likes of Ghosts n Goblins, it packs a punch where it matters: The gameplay.

I must admit, didn't think much about it when first I bought it, and yet it surprised me with good pixellated graphics( for its time), some good tracks (not all of them but still), good and simple gameplay with some non-linear levels and even more interesting boss fights. of course, sometimes the movement and attacks of the main character and others can be stiff, but that was a shared problem with other game of its time. Overall a good experience, its simplicity and yet engaging gameplay is probably one of the reasons i appreciated the game so much, showing the prowess that was famous apogee to put in its platforming games. Prepare for a journey of two brothers against a realm deep into the claws of chaos!

This is the first time I see this game and it is totally worth the money. The controls and animations are smooth using the provided dosbox config, sound, music and effects give it a nice and enjoyable setting. Playing this game for some time now the greatest part about it is the switching between two characters, each with different abilities, choosing wisely where to use what character makes the game either easier or more difficult which is a nice aspect and gives it variety not found in many old platformers. Since it is a dos game and the dosbox config file that comes with the game works on Linux Dosbox too it is also interesting for all gog.com Linux gamers.