Clash: Artifacts of Chaos

Lore & Background

The story of Clash: Artifacts of Chaos takes place in Zenozoik, the fantasy setting of Zeno Clash and Zeno Clash 2. The protagonist is a martial artist named Pseudo who becomes the bodyguard of the Boy, a small creature with healing powers desired by the tyrant Gemini and her henchmen. The game uses a unique cross-hatched rendering filter that gives it a hand-painted pencil style, continuing the series' tradition of surreal and colorful world design.

Reader's Guide

Clash: Artifacts of Chaos introduced several innovations to the Zeno Clash series, including a character customization system with attributes to increase when leveling up and combat stances to unlock, such as the Spear stance granting long reach attacks. The game also features a semi-open world inspired by Bloodborne, replacing the previous maps divided by loading screens with a maze-like design. Combat against intelligent beings can be preceded by a round of the Ritual, a dice game that grants a tactical advantage to the winner from options like an extra ally or a fog cloud opaque only to the adversary. The game's reception was notably divided: critics gave mixed or average reviews, with PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun praising the visual appeal but criticizing the uncompromising combat with fluctuating difficulty and confusing level design lacking distinctive geography. However, eleven days after release, ACE Team co-founder Carlos Bordeau noted a disconnect between critic scores and player reception, citing a 95% Steam approval rating, the highest for any ACE Team title. Almost two years after release, Steam user reviews remained very positive, while Metacritic user score reflected a mixed or average opinion.

Did You Know?

• The game was announced at the Nacon Connect online press conference in July 2021.
• A free demo was distributed at the Steam Next Fest of October 2022 and at the ID@Xbox Winter Game Demo Event.
• The Talos Principle writer Jonas Kyratzes was involved in the development after previous collaborations with ACE Team on SolSeraph and The Eternal Cylinder.
• The game's release was postponed multiple times from June 2022 to March 9, 2023.