Chaos Strikes Back

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Chaos Strikes Back is an expansion to Dungeon Master, the first 3D real-time action computer role-playing game. Chaos Strikes Back was released in 1989 and is also available on several platforms (including Atari ST, Amiga, X68000, PC-98 and FM Towns, but not PC). It uses the same engine as Dungeon Master, with new graphics and creatures.

Whereas the first game saw the player following a fairly linear path through the adventure, with the completion of each flat level marked by a staircase leading down onto a new slightly harder level below, Chaos Strikes Back features a choice of paths which twist back and forth over all levels. The puzzles are far more convoluted, often demanding quick mastery of the control system to deal with intense combat, along with brain vexing riddles and room layouts.

The game is therefore pitched at a much higher difficulty level than its predecessor. The player can choose from a selection of moderately high-level characters or can import characters from a Dungeon Master saved game. In an indication of the game's uncompromising toughness, the player's very first task is to get out of a dark, enclosed room filled with ferociously toothed man-eating giant worms. The game is made a little easier by the inclusion of a separate program which dispenses cryptic hints based on the player's current saved game.

The player's task is to collect four pieces of corbum, a magical material from which the eponymous Lord Chaos draws his power. This requires the traversing of four separate paths each leading to a piece of corbamite and each themed around one of the disciplines open to characters in the game. These disciplines are fighter, wizard, priest and ninja (as with many role-playing computer games of this period, a great though unacknowledged debt was owed to Dungeons and Dragons, of which Chaos Strikes Back has plenty of both).

[edit] Unsolved mystery

Although the solutions to the games various puzzles are long since known, one riddle in particular seems to have remained unsolved so far. In some versions of the game (mainly the Atari ST one), there is a scroll on which the following words are written: Grynix ernum quey ki skebow rednim u os dey wefna enocarn aquantana. This scroll does not appear in most other versions of the game. The meaning of this scroll (if any) is not known.

In the Amiga version, this scroll has the magic map spell "Oh Gor Ku".

According to Bob Retelle who was a consultant for FTL and wrote hint books for both Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back, this scroll is "Another red herring... this was left over from something that was going to be included in the game, but was left out at the last minute... don't worry about it, the scroll can't be decoded..."