Chaos Overlords

Notice that the "Compatible with" field doesn't mention Windows 8. This is because there is white rectangle errors when running this game on Windows 8.

Ah, this brings back memories. My good old reliable 486 was used to fire up this game the first time in 1998 and I immediately fell in love with it. The basic gameplay consists of occupying squares in a grid-like map. Each square in the grid has certain structures that are mainly used to obtain money and control over that square. You pay gangs money to work for you and occupy these grids, as well as defend them from the enemy. The gangs! Whoever came up with these must be bordering on mad genious. You've god the dreaded blood order, you've got smiley-face gangs, scientists, suicidal party goers, professional atheletes with questionable business ethics and so on. Better gangs cost more money to hire, plus they have an upkeep that must be paid each turn. Hire too many gangs too early, and you'll quickly sink into a financial crisis that will be your undoing! You'll research weapons and equipment that will help you complete this goal. Too much chaos and the cops come after you and not enough and you will get run over by rivaling syndicates. You have to carefully balance resources, offense, defense and other variables to be victorious. The only complaint I have is that sometimes you will get a lot of crappy gangs for many turns which will prevent you from advancing, so there is also a factor of luck involved. Usually this only matters at the beginning of a campaign, though.

Chaos Overlords is a superficially nondescript game, but take the time to master it and you'll be rewarded with a deep, challenging and rewarding turn-based strategy. The game revolves around establishing an economy to hire and outfit an army of gangs, while defending your territories and expanding your boundaries. Chaos Overlords has an outstanding soundtrack but it's not a visually impressive game by the standards of TBS games of its era (Chaos Overlords was released in 1996, the year of MoOII, CivII and HoMMII). The city setting is abstracted to a grid and combat animations are represented by static dummies. In spite of its dry presentation, Chaos Overlords is surprisingly immersive. The thumbnail gang portraits and descriptions are wonderfully evocative and the game is very good at creating intense border conflicts and shifting boundaries. GOG's re-release is not the HD overhaul Chaos Overlords fans might have hoped for. The game plays like an emulated 1996 release - a 640x480 screen floating in the middle of your widescreen monitor, with none of the click-intensive GUI quirks ironed out and no windowed support. None of the rough edges matter to me though, I'm just glad to see this underappreciated gem find a permanent home. If you're a fan of TBS and cyberpunk I highly recommend checking it out.

I played for years downloading the game frow abandonware, then i buy it on gog. Surprise! On win 10 is unplayable cause known graphich error... This is a WONDERFUL game but don't buy before gog fix the graphich problem