Champions of Chaxia

Champions of Chaxia is a text-based adventure game. Simple, gamebook-style battle and inventory management are combined with a branching story. Atmosphere and dialogue are important aspects. You will try to survive as best you can as a gladiator in Chaxia, a mighty empire feared across the world for its cruelty and ambition. Use cunning and preparation to overcome a string of opponents. Between battles, navigate the streets and alleys of the shantytown where you’re allowed to roam. Make friendships or abandon allies, break promises or act nobly in order to finally become a champion of Chaxia.

Give Champions of Chaxia a go if the following statements ring true when you play RPGs or adventure games:

* You like to read, as opposed to just skimming the text

* You like your fantasy to be dark, mature and gritty rather than a funhouse of goblins, elves, knights and trolls

* You place a large emphasis on story, coherent world building and atmosphere

* You can stomach realistic descriptions of gladiatorial combat

* When you spend lots of time optimizing your stats or tinkering with your inventory, it feels like a necessary evil that you could do without

You should probably skip this game if your gaming persona is better described by this list:

* You love stats tinkering and finding optimal combos

* You have an attention span not suited to swaths of text

The main game loop is exceedingly simple, and purposely so: the player reads what happens, and then gets to choose from a small number of actions to progress the story. Most locations can be revisited and fast travel is available through a map.

There are just four stats parameters to consider: hit points, strength, armor and fighting prowess. That’s it. In addition, the protagonist keeps an amount of gold and some items, including weapons.

The fighting system is turn-based, like everything else in the game. Despite using dice rolls in the style of old gamebooks, all battles are largely scripted, offering room for strategic decision-making.

A session uses just one save slot, meaning permadeath in theory. In practice, this is circumvented through an in-world mechanism that is akin to the bonfires of the Souls games.

Champions of Chaxia is heavily inspired by the gamebooks that were so popular in the eighties. One of the most appealing features of this form of solo adventuring was the small scope: rarely did these books consist of more than 500 situations in which to choose from a small number of actions so as to further the story. The battle system and inventory management were rudimentary and designed to be mastered immediately. That way, the action could start right away.

The meticulous tinkering with inventory items and stat optimization so popular in games these days… there was rarely much of that.

And even though the interactivity was low by today’s standards, the reader/player still had the illusion of agency, of having the power to affect the miniature world conjured up within the gamebook’s pages.

Champions of Chaxia strives to recreate that feeling.