Popularium’s Chaos Agents game gets pre-alpha playtest

Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering, started a game studio called Popularium and now the company is showing off its title Chaos Agents.

Popularium is now taking Chaos Agnets into its pre-alpha playtest phase. The game is coming from a team led by Garfield and other veteran game creators Skaff Elias, Arka Ray and Jon Bankard.

The playtest will be conducted in collaboration with Gen Con TV, a popular streaming platform for gaming enthusiasts. This milestone marks an exciting step forward for Chaos Agents, which aims to empower gamers to develop their own unique playstyles.

The pre-alpha playtest will be streamed on Gen Con TV, starting at 9 a.m. PT today (October 18). The stream will showcase an initial playtest tournament that took place earlier in October in Seattle, further building anticipation for Chaos Agents.

The team showed me a demo of the gameplay, which is like taking a MOBA or battle royale game and then breaking it down into a turn-based strategy game. Rather than rely on super-fast reactions, the game caters to gamers who are more like thinkers. They can come up with strategies to outwit other players in a battle royale match, and then see their decisions play out in gameplay segments that last about 20 seconds each.

I saw a match with four players. Eventually, the game may pack about 64 players into a match. As you fight and grow your character, you can purchase more skills with the points you earn. The game proceeds on a turn-based basis. You see the action run for 20 seconds, then you issue commands and buff your character for another 20 or 30 seconds. You can do things like go collect more resources or attack. When you attack, you can issue a command to retreat after you take 25% damage.

“We’re ready to expand to pre-alpha playtest through our new Chaos Broker Trainees – as they are better known,” said Garfield. “These playtesters have been selected from thousands of applicants eager to get their first taste of the Chaos Agents Universe. We’re embarking on quite an adventure and Skaff and I are excited by where we’re headed.”

You can look at your character and inspect the skill tree. And when you choose certain skills, the color of the character will change to reflect the choices you’ve made. In that sense, the colors of the characters will be a clue to rival players who are challenging you in the arena.

During the stream, Peter Adkison, the founder of Wizards of the Coast and chair of the board at Gen Con, will join Garfield and Elias to discuss their vision for Chaos Agents. They aspire to create a game that not only maintains the essence of their original card-based work but also pushes the boundaries of player freedom and expression.

Garfield expressed his excitement about expanding the playtesting phase and introducing the Chaos Broker Trainees, a select group of playtesters chosen from thousands of applicants eager to explore the Chaos Agents Universe. He emphasized the adventurous journey they are embarking on and the promising direction they are heading.

The company’s development style is to work on small slices of the game and then test them more frequently with fans.

“We’ve made a significant amount of progress on the overall game,” Ray said in an interview with GamesBeat. “We’re bringing curated early testers in and over the summer we have been heads-down building out all the fun bits of the game. The systems are coming together. We wanted to bring in gamers as soon as possible.”

Garfield said in an interview that the game was inspired by the movement of auto battle royale games. One of the pillars of Chaos Agents is to build something that lets people create their own unique play style that is different from other players. Each hero in the game has its own DNA. There will be some free agents in the game or agents that you pay for.

Ray said the company is exposing about 25% of what it has build so far in the pre-alpha test. There will be more content coming out regularly as the number of testers grows. The game is starting with about six skills that players can learn how to use in matches.

“This is all a big moment for us. We’re opening the door finally, and letting folks check out the game,” Ray said.

The company held an event in Seattle on September 30 in partnership with the Gen Con TV folks. And now it is showing it off live with them today.

Popularium debuted in April with a mere glance at Chaos Agents. The development of the game involves a team of experienced artists and storytellers, including Chris Ryall, formerly the chief creative officer at IDW Publishing; Jeremy Cranford, former art director for Blizzard and Wizards of the Coast; and Peter Orullian, the creator of the Vault of Heaven series. All told, the team has 15 people.

“We want to take this opportunity to thank pioneering community leaders and moderators have helped make it easy and fun for us to launch the playtest,” said Bankard, in a statement. “They’ve also inspired us with their enthusiasm and incredible feedback on Chaos Agents and our community.”

As the first group of playtesters joins the Chaos Agents journey, Popularium is actively selecting the next wave of recruits for a much larger class of playtesters. To secure a spot in line for the playtest, interested individuals can join the Chaos Agents playtest waitlist by visiting this link.

“We are seeing enthusiasm for how the game embodies our core philosophy, to empower gamers to pursue their unique playstyles and creativity instead of treating them purely as customers,” said Ray. “We’re building games and experiences that blur the lines between gamers and creators, a key motivator
behind launching a pre-alpha playtest very early in our development cycle. We want to give gamers the kind of joy, flexibility and depth in our games that they would expect from the creators of Magic and Hearthstone, and have them be our guides every step of the way.”

“We think we can offer a really compelling free experience. There will be nothing like buying power-ups or [blockchain elemtns] or anything like that,” Garfield said. “As a design goal. I want to make it so that the characters feel complete, like you’ve got a complete game experience with a single character. But if you want to invest more, there is variety. And that is where we’re headed.”