Story
In the distant mists of time, the role playing game was born. From Dungeons and Dragons, the ultimate progenitor of the genre, games such as Wizardry and Ultima branched off from there. In turn, these games in turn were the inspiration for Dragon Quest/Warrior. And it in turn spawned titles such as Final Fantasy, which had many descendants of its own. All of these influences ultimately form a family tree of role-playing games, all ultimately deriving from the first D&D ports on the computers of the 1970s.
But something is wrong with these venerable titles. Heroes from across the universe woke up to find themselves at the beginning of their adventures. Some force has drawn the many villains of all existance to begin to collaborate. The natural process of evolution was under threat. The Light Warriors could no longer easily defeat Garland: he knocked them all down to another world.
By chance, the Fighter of the Light Warriors was sent to Alefgard as one of Erdrick’s descendants set sail for new shores, and they ran into each other…
Information
Chaotic Evolution was my entry for the Super Hit Post Contest. As its name implies (initialise “Super”), it is a troll hack contest, drawing inspiration from Ragefest. Its scoring rubric is bizarre and nonsensical, entirely by design. I set myself several design goals, and I ended up hitting most of them. Fun, however, was not one of them.
The chapter itself draws heavy inspiration from FE4. The original plan was there for to be two chapters, each chapter representing a generation of RPG heroes. However, my priorities were generally elsewhere and I ended up rushing until the eleventh hour to get one barely functioning chapter released.
In fact, people thought I had missed the deadline and sacrificed score from their own entries in order to give me an extension. I happily accepted their sacrifices and made the chapter a bit less broken. Chaotic Evolution features…
- 24 characters from RPGs preceding the SNES
- A chapter with multiple checkpoints
- 30 “support conversations”
- Various powerful weapons
FE4’s most famous mechanic, the lover system, is functional in-game, though with the second chapter being unfinished, only one can be played. More specifically, a shrunken Eureka and Sylx Tower from Final Fantasy 3. Anyone who has seen those places with their own two eyes would do well to be afraid.
It features the lengthy backtrack from FF3, though there is a way around it. The chapter is extremely lengthy and suspend had to be disabled in order to fit in-engine saves. And without any blatant spoilers, let’s just say Genealogy’s inspiration runs deep in the ending. Most of the story itself is a somewhat-random mashup of plot beats from various pre-SNES RPGs, with the opening cutscene having a target of 1,000 lines set for its length as a challenge.
In the end, my entry was the final one played, being the final one submitted (aside from a late withdrawal). It scored 58/80 points, coming in 9th place out of 20.
Project Status
Chaotic Evolution is a contest entry, albeit an unfinished one. Should another rom hacking contest arrive, I would like to submit the unfinished second chapter to it.
Gallery
Super Hit Post Contest videos:
Downloads and Links
Latest release (v1.1, 06/01/2025): Here
Initial release (v1.0, 01/01/2025): Here
Fire Emblem Universe post: Here