Aura of Chaos

Aura of Chaos is a 2D role-playing game created by Ryan Nurse and Animatron Studios. First conceived in 2010, it began development in 2012, initially as an RPG Maker XP game before being shifted to RPG Maker VX the following year. After a long period of development hell, it entered full development in July 2015; just two months later, the game was lost after Nurse's hard drive failed, and development had to start over from scratch.

Aura of Chaos is set in an unnamed fantasy world, and follows a bounty hunter named Xeron as he is drawn into a sorcerer's evil plot to conquer the world by summoning monsters from another dimension. Featuring a large, richly-detailed game world, and choices that can affect the main storyline, the game is arguably one of Nurse's largest and most ambitious projects.

Gameplay
Like most role-playing games, Aura of Chaos ' gameplay consists of two main elements: exploration and combat. The game features a large, fully-explorable world with dozens of towns and villages; the player is mostly free to explore and take on side-quests, but certain paths may be locked until the player reaches a certain point in the storyline. Towns vary in size, with the largest spanning over a dozen screens and containing scores of interactive NPCs, who may give the player items, side-quests, or challenges, or discuss the world's extensive lore with them. The overworld also contains numerous scattered item chests, as well as dozens of readable books that expand on the world's lore.

Combat uses a standard turn-based system. As well as standard attacks, Tara is able to use Magic attacks, cast from Mana Points (MP), while Xeron is able to use Techniques, cast from Technique Points (TP). The player may equip Xeron with either a spear, axe, or sword, with each having a different trade-off between damage, accuracy, and critical hit ratio; spears, for example, are more accurate but deal less damage.

At various points in the story, the player is presented with two or more options of how to proceed, allowing them to influence events. Some choices are relatively inconsequential, while others may have far-reaching effects.

Setting
The game is set in the kingdom of Albion, one of several nations in the game's fictional setting. Thirty years ago, Albion's king was attacked by a Black Witch who attempted to immolate the royal carriage; the king escaped with only minor burns, but was so incensed by the attempt on his life that he made Witchcraft an offence punishable by death. Witches were driven underground, surviving in small, sheltered communities known as "Oases".

Plot
The story begins when bounty hunter Xeron is hired by a village to clear monsters out of a nearby cave. After he has done so, a mysterious man appears claiming responsibility for the infestation, before attacking Xeron and leaving him for dead. A woman named Tara takes Xeron in and heals him. Later that night, the villagers, suspicious of Xeron's fast recovery, accuse Tara of being a Witch and try to attack her; Xeron defends her and the two flee the village together, but Tara's house is burned down in the process. Tara tearfully admits to being a Witch, and without anywhere else to go, she begs Xeron to take him with her. Xeron agrees, and together, the pair find themselves drawn into a battle against the sorcerer who had attacked Xeron, who has stolen an artifact that allows him to open portals between dimensions, and aims to use it to conquer the world using monsters summoned from the portals.

Characters

 * Xeron: The main character, a spear-wielding bounty hunter who finds himself battling otherworldly creatures.
 * Tara: A White Witch who becomes Xeron's partner, and soon starts to develop romantic feelings for him.
 * ???: The antagonist, a mysterious man in a hooded cloak who is behind the monster invasions, and also appears to be capable of Black Magic.

Development
The first version of Aura of Chaos was conceived in 2010 as one of several retro-style games planned by Nurse. This version would have had more of an action-oriented feel, similar to The Legend of Zelda. This approach was soon scrapped in favour of a simple RPG Maker XP game.

By mid-2013, little progress had been made on the XP version, and in October that year Nurse started work on a new version of the game in RPG Maker VX Ace. The game's lore underwent a significant expansion during this time, with many elements being conceived that would later make it into the full game. The start of Project 20:15 intensified development of both the world lore and the main storyline; by September 2015, Aura of Chaos had had 16 posts written about it, second only to StarLight.

In July 2015, Nurse announced that Aura of Chaos would be entering full production, with a view to having a finished, polished demo version completed by May 2016. However, on 11 September, Nurse's hard drive failed, and Aura of Chaos was lost along with all its planning documents. Nurse soon announced his intention to rebuild the entire game from scratch, using his Project 20:15 posts as a guide, and with the intention of making the newest version more polished and refined. He also stated that since he was now using the Steam version of VX Ace, the new version of the game would be backed up via Steam Cloud and would be safe from any future crashes.