Remember when I used to write about video games? Yeah, me neither. But the long-awaited release of Chasm by @bitkidgames (6 years in the making) gives me good enough reason to make an exception.
When it comes to platformers, I’m in it for the game tourism. I dig through the gameplay to uncover beautiful nuggets of location art that the genre so prominently features when given the right talent for the job. After Owlboy and Iconoclasts and Aegis Defenders (and MoonQuest) we now have Chasm with environments skillfully painted by Dan Fessler and Tony Redmer (Glauber ‘@unseven’ Kotaki did character/fx animations btw). It’s perfection at the highest level, but you can see that for yourself.
Now, I did end up enjoying the platforming as well. It’s fun to figure out enemies’ patterns and find the right maneuvers to defeat them given your choice of weaponry. There are plenty of the latter, which together with random(ishly) generated maps give you enough reason for multiple playthroughs. But I leave that to others—the tunnels between the aformentioned nuggets of gold are not exactly art vacation material. The constant progression of your abilities (hanging from ledges, lantern, wall jump …) did make the frequent recursive trips more interesting though.
It took me 15 hours to finish (on Medium difficulty), 4 of which were spent retracing my steps because deaths are punishing. You have to go in with an 80s/90s mentality, because the game could care less that in the last 20 years you became soft from playing narrative walking simulators. If you’ve got what it takes, it’s well worth the indie price of $20. Available for all PC systems (Steam), as well as PS4 and Vita.
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