Magic & Mayhem: The Art of Magic Preview
Is Art of Magic nothing more than a 3D version of Magic & Mayhem? Read on to find out.
Way back in 1984, Julian Gollop wrote a game for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. It was called Chaos: The Battle of Wizards, a simple strategy game that pitted you against up to seven other wizards in a spellcasting duel, one in which you summoned creatures and attacked your enemies with fireballs and other conjurations. Almost 15 years later, after designing the classic X-Com: UFO Defense, Gollop's company, Mythos Games, developed Magic & Mayhem, which was essentially remake of Chaos. The game had advanced far beyond its predecessor in its presentation, but its gameplay had the same core elements.
Two years later, Bethesda Softworks (the publisher of Magic & Mayhem) is publishing a sequel. With Mythos Games deep into the development of Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge, responsibility for the new game has been placed in the hands of Charybdis, another British development house. Entitled Magic & Mayhem: The Art of Magic, the sequel is essentially an expanded version of the original, with a stunning new 3D engine and a more involved campaign. Advances in technology since the release of Magic & Mayhem make it possible to render the entire game in 3D and endow it with some spectacular special effects. It's a bit like Sacrifice - it's played on the tactical scale of Myth: The Fallen Lords, with a little Magic: The Gathering-style spell selection thrown in.
The basic premise behind the Magic & Mayhem series is that you control a wizard and, through him, manage an arsenal of spells that you use to defeat your enemies. There is a significant RPG element to the game: As you gain experience, you can increase your health, mana, and spellcasting abilities. The game maps depict a variety of terrain, and you traverse them in real time - you interact with characters to advance the story while you're in the solo campaign mode or just in straight combat when you're playing in skirmish mode or multiplayer.
Perhaps the most innovative aspect of the Magic & Mayhem system is the way in which spells are selected. Your character has a number of talismans, which are chaotic, lawful, or neutral in alignment. At various points in the game, you'll find spell ingredients like herbs, as well as precious stones like lapis lazuli or iron pyrite. The trick is that these ingredients can be used to cast different spells, depending on which talisman they are assigned to. For example, brimstone can be used to cast meteor shower (chaos), summon troll (neutral), or lightning (law), while deadly nightshade makes summon skeleton (chaos), fireball (neutral), and bury (law) available. Each ingredient can be combined with only one talisman, though, and each talisman can hold only one ingredient. So if you have only one brimstone, you'll have to choose between the three aforementioned spells, and you might not even have access to one or more if you don't have the proper alignment of talisman. This makes spell selection require a good deal of strategy, since you'll want to choose a range of spells that work well together.
Magic & Mayhem: The Art of Magic Quick Links
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- Bethesda Softworks
- Charybdis
- Real-Time Strategy
- Release: Oct 26, 2001
- ESRB: Teen
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