Clash: Artifacts of Chaos has been revealed by ACE Team and Nacon, a third-person action-adventure with a rather distinctive art style and focus on hand-to-hand combat. The game is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, Xbox One and PC in 2022.
Clash: Artifacts of Chaos takes players to the inhospitable lands of Zenozoik, putting you the role of lone warrior Pseudo, who takes a small soot sprite-like creature with healing powers into his care. Pseudo battles through the challenges that face them using unarmed combat inspired by various martial arts. The rules of engagement change through a game of dice that you must then obey in the brutal hand-to-hand fights that follow.
What’s particularly distinctive is the game’s art style, which has shades of graphic novels to its look and feel. There’s an almost cel shaded appearance at a distance, but closer up, you can see a kind of pencil art effect layered on top. All of the creatures in the game have intriguing designs, with Pseudo an odd looking character with a small head that can seemingly be modified and transformed through the adventure.
Clash: Artifcats of Chaos comes from ACE Team, who are most recently known for their Rock of Ages series, in which you send large boulders through Python-esque levels and crush things, and there’s also the upcoming Eternal Cylinder, in which surreal little creatures try to survive as a vast cylinder rolls across the lands and tries to crush them. However, Clash: Artifacts of Chaos can draw its roots back to ACE Team’s first game: Zeno Clash. Released in 2009, it too was set in the world of Zenozoik, though the character of Ghat fought his way through a string of narrative-led encounters in first-person combat instead of third-person.
It will be really interesting to see how ACE Team has changed their approach, some eight years after the second Zeno Clash was released.
