Environment Artist Dan Fessler explaining the game to some new fans at PSX


It used to be that the conference circuit started up in March at GDC (Game Developers Conference) and continued more or less non-stop until the final show in September at PAX Prime in Seattle. Sony took advantage of the vacuum in the schedule to put together the big finale of the year: PlayStation Experience. We weren’t able to make the 2014 show in Las Vegas, so we were really excited to participate in the 2015 event in San Francisco. Our two Dans – Fessler and Adelman (environment art and biz dev/marketing, respectively) – set up and ran the booth for the two-day event.


Before the show floor opened



We've been hard at work wrapping up the new intro area, and we're just about there! The tileset has been completed and Glauber and Dan are putting the finishing touches on the art while Jimi records some new sound effects. Say hello to the Master at Arms who forges the weapons and armor for the Guildean Outpost's soldiers, on top of training them and giving advice. Listen closely, you might learn something important from her!



We've also been chipping away at the huge list of enemies and bosses we have planned for the game, and I'm happy to report that we're nearing completion on them! Here's a first look at one of the enemies from the Keep - the Executioner. His spinning ax chain has quite the reach, so keep your distance from his flying guillotine and watch your timing!



In addition to all the core content of the game, we've also been knocking out some of the additional features we promised for backers of the game. For $50+ tier backers, you have now been immortalized in the ancient Backer's Tome. With it, you will be able to easily find and display your name to all your friends and family, reminding them that you helped make Chasm possible!

We'll have more content to reveal next month, so stay tuned!

Environment Artist Dan Fessler explaining the game to some new fans at PSX


It used to be that the conference circuit started up in March at GDC (Game Developers Conference) and continued more or less non-stop until the final show in September at PAX Prime in Seattle. Sony took advantage of the vacuum in the schedule to put together the big finale of the year: PlayStation Experience. We weren’t able to make the 2014 show in Las Vegas, so we were really excited to participate in the 2015 event in San Francisco. Our two Dans – Fessler and Adelman (environment art and biz dev/marketing, respectively) – set up and ran the booth for the two-day event.


Before the show floor opened



We've been hard at work wrapping up the new intro area, and we're just about there! The tileset has been completed and Glauber and Dan are putting the finishing touches on the art while Jimi records some new sound effects. Say hello to the Master at Arms who forges the weapons and armor for the Guildean Outpost's soldiers, on top of training them and giving advice. Listen closely, you might learn something important from her!



We've also been chipping away at the huge list of enemies and bosses we have planned for the game, and I'm happy to report that we're nearing completion on them! Here's a first look at one of the enemies from the Keep - the Executioner. His spinning ax chain has quite the reach, so keep your distance from his flying guillotine and watch your timing!



In addition to all the core content of the game, we've also been knocking out some of the additional features we promised for backers of the game. For $50+ tier backers, you have now been immortalized in the ancient Backer's Tome. With it, you will be able to easily find and display your name to all your friends and family, reminding them that you helped make Chasm possible!

We'll have more content to reveal next month, so stay tuned!

(in-game screenshot)

Over the summer we announced that we were adding a new intro area to start off Daltyn's adventure, and now we're excited to reveal the opening scene! Daltyn likes to sneak up to the watchtower at night to stargaze and dream of adventure beyond the Outpost walls, but on this fateful morning his good friend Jareth awakens him with orders to report to the Commander at once. I hope he's not in trouble for sneaking out of his bunk again!


(original composition)

This fall has been a very productive time for Chasm. For the past few months we've focused all our energy on finishing up many of the core components of the game like the enemies, mapping, tilesets, and more. We're not quite there yet, but hopefully around the end of the year we'll be very close. From there we still have a lot revising, extra content, cleanup and polishing to do, but we're inching ever closer to the finish line. We'd like to thank you for your patience again as we continue to toil away perfecting Chasm. We know it's been a much longer wait than originally intended, but we're confident that it will be worth all the extra effort. Stay tuned for another detailed production recap in the coming months!



If you're in the San Franscisco Bay Area make sure to stop by and see us at Playstation Experience this weekend (Dec. 5-6). Dan Adelman (Biz Guru) and Dan Fessler (Environment Artist) will be manning the booth, greeting fans, and talking to the press all weekend, so make sure to stop by Booth #2060 and say hi!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuF6jDIF_rs
Our bi-weekly developer streams have continued to air every other Thursday, and our next is on December 3rd at 7PM EST! We've been trying some different formats for the show, including doing developer interviews with other indie devs. Our first interview features Tom Happ, the solo creator of Axiom Verge. Check out the two hour interview as we play his amazing game and ask questions about both designing and developing Axiom Verge!

(in-game screenshot)

Over the summer we announced that we were adding a new intro area to start off Daltyn's adventure, and now we're excited to reveal the opening scene! Daltyn likes to sneak up to the watchtower at night to stargaze and dream of adventure beyond the Outpost walls, but on this fateful morning his good friend Jareth awakens him with orders to report to the Commander at once. I hope he's not in trouble for sneaking out of his bunk again!


(original composition)

This fall has been a very productive time for Chasm. For the past few months we've focused all our energy on finishing up many of the core components of the game like the enemies, mapping, tilesets, and more. We're not quite there yet, but hopefully around the end of the year we'll be very close. From there we still have a lot revising, extra content, cleanup and polishing to do, but we're inching ever closer to the finish line. We'd like to thank you for your patience again as we continue to toil away perfecting Chasm. We know it's been a much longer wait than originally intended, but we're confident that it will be worth all the extra effort. Stay tuned for another detailed production recap in the coming months!



If you're in the San Franscisco Bay Area make sure to stop by and see us at Playstation Experience this weekend (Dec. 5-6). Dan Adelman (Biz Guru) and Dan Fessler (Environment Artist) will be manning the booth, greeting fans, and talking to the press all weekend, so make sure to stop by Booth #2060 and say hi!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuF6jDIF_rs
Our bi-weekly developer streams have continued to air every other Thursday, and our next is on December 3rd at 7PM EST! We've been trying some different formats for the show, including doing developer interviews with other indie devs. Our first interview features Tom Happ, the solo creator of Axiom Verge. Check out the two hour interview as we play his amazing game and ask questions about both designing and developing Axiom Verge!

Thanks to the generous support of Sony, Chasm was playable at IndieCade just a week or so ago. In case you’re not familiar, IndieCade is to games festivals as Sundance is to film festivals. There are a bunch of experimental games pushing the boundaries of what constitutes a game, such as installation pieces that could never be installed in someone’s home (or at least not without a ton of work), as well as “Big” games where there is no screen at all, and more along the lines of playground games but with rules made up by game designers.

In that context, Sony put together their booth with their most highly anticipated games, and we were proud to be among them. Unfortunately, Chasm kind of stops getting made whenever we all pick up and head off to a festival (fun though they are) so Dan Adelman, our marketing and business guy, went down to Culver City, CA to represent us and the game.

The show was a great success. Despite sub-optimal environmental conditions (over 80 degrees in a tent that just trapped all of the moisture and heat so it felt like a sauna – and often smelled like one too) attendees kept coming. The controller was never put down for more than about 10 seconds before someone else picked it up.





The primary goal was to get the game in front of lots of players who may not have heard of it before, but a secondary goal was to talk about it with press, so they could tell the world about it. There were lots of journalists in attendance, and only a handful of the articles are already out. If you’re curious what the environment looked like, here’s an interview that was shot on location.

Our next big show is going to be at PlayStation Experience in San Francisco over the December 5-6 weekend. If you’re from the Bay Area, please check it out!


As fellow lovers of retro games, we're also familiar with the multitude of ways to display them. It can become a very heated debate on what the "right" way to display retro games is, so we will withhold our personal opinions on the subject! We know not everyone is a fan of razor-sharp pixels though, so we've tried to bring the most popular options to the table so you can choose how you'd like to play.



With modern emulators there are basically three ways to display a game: the raw pixel output, filtered with some sort of smoothing algorithm (bicubic, Eagle, Hqx, etc.), or with a TV effect that emulates a CRT (cathode ray tube) and its iconic scanlines. We wanted to give everyone some options depending on their personal preferences, so we've got 4 modes to share with you today:

• Pixel: The default mode, raw pixel output for the fans of blocky, sharp pixels that everyone has seen.
  
• Smooth: We also wanted to include a good smoothing algorithm, and after some research we found the newer xBR algorithm to be hands down the best option at this time. We combined it with a subtle 2nd pass blur filter for an incredibly smooth image.

We also have two different options for CRT fans, thanks to an amazing shader created for us by Timothy Lottes of FXAA fame:

• PVM (Pro Video Monitor): A softer image, closest to a high-end tube TV running at 240P with nice visible scanlines.
  
• Arcade: Similar to PVM, but also includes a visible aperture grille for a more arcade feel.

All the modes besides pixel will of course have their own downsides with either losing information (smoothing can destroy tiny details like the flag on the mailbox) or brightness (adding scanlines removes a good portion of the brightness). We've done some work to offset these effects, and will continue to tweak things to get them looking as good as possible.

Lastly, here are the full 1080P screenshots of both of the scenes used in the comparisons above. Please keep in mind, especially with CRT effects, that they won't look right unless you are viewing them at their full size. For this reason, we recommend if you will be streaming or recording gameplay footage to only use Pixel or Smooth settings!

Town: Pixel, Smooth, PVM, Arcade
Keep: Pixel, Smooth, PVM, Arcade

Thanks to the generous support of Sony, Chasm was playable at IndieCade just a week or so ago. In case you’re not familiar, IndieCade is to games festivals as Sundance is to film festivals. There are a bunch of experimental games pushing the boundaries of what constitutes a game, such as installation pieces that could never be installed in someone’s home (or at least not without a ton of work), as well as “Big” games where there is no screen at all, and more along the lines of playground games but with rules made up by game designers.

In that context, Sony put together their booth with their most highly anticipated games, and we were proud to be among them. Unfortunately, Chasm kind of stops getting made whenever we all pick up and head off to a festival (fun though they are) so Dan Adelman, our marketing and business guy, went down to Culver City, CA to represent us and the game.

The show was a great success. Despite sub-optimal environmental conditions (over 80 degrees in a tent that just trapped all of the moisture and heat so it felt like a sauna – and often smelled like one too) attendees kept coming. The controller was never put down for more than about 10 seconds before someone else picked it up.





The primary goal was to get the game in front of lots of players who may not have heard of it before, but a secondary goal was to talk about it with press, so they could tell the world about it. There were lots of journalists in attendance, and only a handful of the articles are already out. If you’re curious what the environment looked like, here’s an interview that was shot on location.

Our next big show is going to be at PlayStation Experience in San Francisco over the December 5-6 weekend. If you’re from the Bay Area, please check it out!


As fellow lovers of retro games, we're also familiar with the multitude of ways to display them. It can become a very heated debate on what the "right" way to display retro games is, so we will withhold our personal opinions on the subject! We know not everyone is a fan of razor-sharp pixels though, so we've tried to bring the most popular options to the table so you can choose how you'd like to play.



With modern emulators there are basically three ways to display a game: the raw pixel output, filtered with some sort of smoothing algorithm (bicubic, Eagle, Hqx, etc.), or with a TV effect that emulates a CRT (cathode ray tube) and its iconic scanlines. We wanted to give everyone some options depending on their personal preferences, so we've got 4 modes to share with you today:

• Pixel: The default mode, raw pixel output for the fans of blocky, sharp pixels that everyone has seen.
  
• Smooth: We also wanted to include a good smoothing algorithm, and after some research we found the newer xBR algorithm to be hands down the best option at this time. We combined it with a subtle 2nd pass blur filter for an incredibly smooth image.

We also have two different options for CRT fans, thanks to an amazing shader created for us by Timothy Lottes of FXAA fame:

• PVM (Pro Video Monitor): A softer image, closest to a high-end tube TV running at 240P with nice visible scanlines.
  
• Arcade: Similar to PVM, but also includes a visible aperture grille for a more arcade feel.

All the modes besides pixel will of course have their own downsides with either losing information (smoothing can destroy tiny details like the flag on the mailbox) or brightness (adding scanlines removes a good portion of the brightness). We've done some work to offset these effects, and will continue to tweak things to get them looking as good as possible.

Lastly, here are the full 1080P screenshots of both of the scenes used in the comparisons above. Please keep in mind, especially with CRT effects, that they won't look right unless you are viewing them at their full size. For this reason, we recommend if you will be streaming or recording gameplay footage to only use Pixel or Smooth settings!

Town: Pixel, Smooth, PVM, Arcade
Keep: Pixel, Smooth, PVM, Arcade

We're very excited to announce that the soundtrack has been completed! It was quite the challenge to find the right sound for the world of Chasm, but our talented musician James Stevulak did an amazing job capturing it. He experimented with many different styles, tempos, and instrumentations all in search of the perfect atmosphere and pace for Daltyn's exploration of the world.

We looked to Castlevania and Metroid for direction early on, and we learned that Chasm's sprawling areas were much more suited to Metroid's dark and atmospheric tracks than Castlevania's jazzy, high-tempo fare. We also wanted to keep the instrumentation grounded with things that could exist in Chasm's world such as horns, acoustic guitar, strings, hand drums, flutes, bells, and chants. In some cases we did use more modern sounds like synthesizers and electric guitar, but only when we felt it fit right with the track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYBG3tE3M3g

In celebration of this milestone, we put together a video previewing 9 of the soundtrack's 20 tracks. Hopefully it gives you a feel for the world of Chasm, and the sights and sounds you will experience there. We hope you enjoy, and will join us in applauding James for his stunning effort!

Be sure to check out the latest Kickstarter Update for details on our PAX Prime excursion and upcoming additional Twitch streams!

We're very excited to announce that the soundtrack has been completed! It was quite the challenge to find the right sound for the world of Chasm, but our talented musician James Stevulak did an amazing job capturing it. He experimented with many different styles, tempos, and instrumentations all in search of the perfect atmosphere and pace for Daltyn's exploration of the world.

We looked to Castlevania and Metroid for direction early on, and we learned that Chasm's sprawling areas were much more suited to Metroid's dark and atmospheric tracks than Castlevania's jazzy, high-tempo fare. We also wanted to keep the instrumentation grounded with things that could exist in Chasm's world such as horns, acoustic guitar, strings, hand drums, flutes, bells, and chants. In some cases we did use more modern sounds like synthesizers and electric guitar, but only when we felt it fit right with the track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYBG3tE3M3g

In celebration of this milestone, we put together a video previewing 9 of the soundtrack's 20 tracks. Hopefully it gives you a feel for the world of Chasm, and the sights and sounds you will experience there. We hope you enjoy, and will join us in applauding James for his stunning effort!

Be sure to check out the latest Kickstarter Update for details on our PAX Prime excursion and upcoming additional Twitch streams!

Latest Gardens tileset revision with improved details, lighting, and readability.

We've prepared an extensive production update for everyone this month! It breaks down many facets of the game and details what stage each is currently at. On top of that, there's a few behind the scenes photos and teases at what's to come. Check it out now on our official Kickstarter page!


We'll be showing off Chasm this weekend as part of the PAX Prime Indie Megabooth! If you'll be there stop by and say hi, grab some swag, and check out the latest demo. We hope to see you there!

Latest Gardens tileset revision with improved details, lighting, and readability.

We've prepared an extensive production update for everyone this month! It breaks down many facets of the game and details what stage each is currently at. On top of that, there's a few behind the scenes photos and teases at what's to come. Check it out now on our official Kickstarter page!


We'll be showing off Chasm this weekend as part of the PAX Prime Indie Megabooth! If you'll be there stop by and say hi, grab some swag, and check out the latest demo. We hope to see you there!