Explore the depths below a remote mountain town in this procedurally-generated Adventure Platformer. Taking inspiration from hack 'n slash dungeon crawlers and Metroidvania-style platformers, Chasm will immerse you in a fantasy world full of exciting treasure, deadly enemies, and abundant secrets.
After more than five years in development, Bit Kid announced today that the procedurally-generated Metroidvania called Chasm will be out on July 31. The studio also went into detail about what exactly "procedurally generated" means, saying that the feature "has led to a lot of questions and confusion."
The developers opted for procedural generation in order to help keep the experience fresh over multiple replays: It's impossible to memorize a map, after all, if the map changes every time. At the same time, it needed to ensure that the game still feels hand-crafted, so that players "have no idea that there's anything procedural about it." To accomplish that, the basic layout of Chasm's objectives and plot points remain the same in every game, but the path you follow to reach them will change.
"Chasm has a bunch of pre-designed rooms that are slotted in modularly in different combinations," the studio explained. "So you won’t have any rooms that feel like they were designed by a computer—instead, you’ll encounter rooms in a different order and even encounter new rooms you never saw the first time, and your path will be different each time you start up a new campaign."
That still left "a ton of balancing" to ensure the pieces all came together properly. Combat and platforming has to be appropriately spaced, save points have to be sufficiently close together (but not too close), required skills and abilities must be available when needed, "and you want to make sure that there’s just the right amount of treasures and surprises along the way to encourage exploration of every little nook and cranny of the game."
Those of you who prefer the more consistent experience of a fixed map are covered too. The randomized elements are all generated based off of a seed number, so if you want to recreate a specific layout, to follow along with a streamer, for instance, or to replay a map you particularly enjoyed, just enter the seed number and you'll be all set.
Chasm is listed, but not yet available for pre-purchase, on Steam, and there's also a website up with more info at chasmgame.com.
April 2013: Metroidvania roguelike Chasm lands on Kickstarter, with a demo.February 2014: After going quiet for a time, Chasm resurfaces with a new trailer.July 2018: Chasm finally sees the light of day, releasing July 31st (or 16th for backers).
They say good things come to those who wait, and Bit Kid’s Chasm has always looked very good indeed. While a multitude of other games have grasped for that metroidvania roguelike crown in the interim (such as Dead Cells), Chasm staked its claim early. and thanks to its detailed and smoothly animated pixel-art, it doesn’t look like it’s aged a day, as you can see in the new trailer below.
Unlike some other games that are developed in secret and then announced about 6 months before launch, Chasm has been in the public eye pretty much from the beginning. Our first post about the game was on IndieDB.com back in January 2013, and we launched a successful Kickstarter campaign just a few months later. It is with a combination of pride, exuberance, relief, and fear that I am hereby officially announcing that we will be launching on July 31, 2018 for $19.99! We’ll be doing a week 1 discount on Steam so keep an eye out for it. And if you haven’t done so already, please add us to your wishlist! (And be sure to tell your friends!)
As you probably know, one distinctive feature of Chasm is that the world map is procedurally generated when you start up a new campaign. That feature has led to a lot of questions and confusion, so I’d like to address exactly how it works and why we designed it that way. The latter part is easy to answer: Our entire team is composed of Metroidvania fans! Whether it’s Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or Axiom Verge, we’ve played through our favorite games so often that we’ve long since memorized the maps. We love how those games play but wish we could wipe our memories so we could get that experience of exploration all over again. It’s our hope that people who love Chasm the way we love our favorite games can play it over and over and still have it feel fresh. But at the same time, people who only play the game once should have no idea that there’s anything procedural about it.
Wake up Daltyn, it's almost time!
But that’s not to say that everything’s completely random. The way our system works is that there is a fundamental structure to the game that never changes. If you’re familiar with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night you may recall that first you get the Jewel of Open, then the Leap Stone, then the Soul of Bat - in that order. As you get these upgrades, new areas of the map become accessible. Chasm, like all Metroidvanias, follows this structure. When you start up a campaign, the game always has these key upgrades and plot points in the same place. What’s different is how you get from one key point to the other. Chasm has a bunch of pre-designed rooms that are slotted in modularly in different combinations. So you won’t have any rooms that feel like they were designed by a computer - instead, you’ll encounter rooms in a different order and even encounter new rooms you never saw the first time, and your path will be different each time you start up a new campaign.
Getting that to feel right was way easier said than done. There was a ton of balancing we needed to make sure the procedural engine took into account when it builds a world map. There’s pacing - you don’t want to have a string of combat rooms with lots of enemies and no platforming to break it up, nor do you want the opposite. You don’t want the system to block your progress by requiring a certain ability upgrade that you don’t have yet. You don’t want to have the save points too far apart. (To address a common misconception, Chasm is not a roguelike with permadeath, though there is an option for that for veteran players. Permadeath combined with the changing dungeons makes for a tense experience since you never know how many more rooms you need to make it to the end.) And you want to make sure that there’s just the right amount of treasures and surprises along the way to encourage exploration of every little nook and cranny of the game.
There are some people who like the comfort of getting to know a single map by playing it over and over or being able to follow their favorite YouTuber’s walkthrough of the game. We have an option for that too. Everything randomly generated by the game engine is based off of a seed number. If you enter a specific seed number, you can guarantee a specific map. So if you want to follow a walkthrough, just check their seed number and enter that when you set up your campaign.
We’re very excited - and not a little bit nervous - to send our baby out into the world. We’ve polished and fine tuned every little bit of that game to make sure there were no compromises to our original vision over 5 years ago. We can’t wait to hear what you think on July 31st!
I can’t tell you how excited I am to let you know that we’ve achieved a major milestone - PRODUCTION IS FINISHED! Here’s what still has to happen between now and launch. First, we've already submitted the game for certification on PlayStation 4 and Vita. While that's in process, we are taking care of pre-launch tasks like prepping all of the text for localization (which might be released as a post-launch update), getting our public bug reporting system back up and running, catching up on paperwork (and a million other small tasks) we've put off for the last few months while we crunched, and, most importantly, coordinating with Sony and Valve to pick the ideal launch date so that we’ll be able to give Chasm the exposure it deserves. The primary factors that we’ll be looking at are dates that are relatively not too crowded and making sure we give ourselves time to reach out to press so they can write up reviews in time for launch. We’ll make a follow up announcement once we lock the final date down. In the meantime, if you have any friends who haven’t heard of Chasm, please be sure to let them know to add it to their Steam wishlist!
Gotta collect them all!
It’s been a little while since our last update since we were just laser focused on finishing up everything in the game. Here’s a quick recap of some of the tasks we completed in the last few months:
Lots of sound effects added. With the boss and enemy SFX finally completed, we turned our attention to environmental and scripted SFX. It's always amazing to see how much more immersive just a few sounds can make a scene.
Weapons and items improved. We added a bunch of new weapons and items, as well as re-animating the majority of the weapons with more detailed and higher frame rate animations (around double the original frame rates). In addition to the visual side, several improvements to gameplay have been added like the often requested attack cancelling (cutting your air attack short so you can immediately attack again after landing on the ground for two quick hits), as well as new Rod and Pole weapon classes.
Remaining environment art completed. The town was the first area created for the game, and fittingly enough, the last we worked on at the end. Room had to be made for a bunch of new NPCs, as well as some re-organization to make your trips to town as convenient as possible.
Tons of detail in NPC side quests. I think the NPCs really bring the story and game to life. All of their quests are optional, but completing them all makes the town of Karthas feel alive.
Bestiary completed. The Bestiary is a fun little side addition with extra information about the enemies you fight. Each enemy will take a pre-determined number of kills to unlock, and if you unlock all of them you will receive the Zoologist achievement. Please note their item drops cannot be seen until you've gotten them!
We got our ESRB rating! We’re officially E10+ with Fantasy Violence, Simulated Gambling and Alcohol Reference descriptors. So if you were 5 when we did the Kickstarter, you’re old enough to play Chasm today. (ha ha… ha ha… sigh…)
First look at Rod weapons and attack cancelling.
That’s not even to mention all of the little plumbing details - improving load times, fixing edge case bugs, testing achievements and trophies, etc. - that are part and parcel of releasing a polished game.
We plan on getting Alpha-tier backers access to the full game as soon as possible. As mentioned above we have many post-production / pre-launch tasks to wrap up first, but we are moving as fast as we can. We're looking forward to everyone finally getting their hands on the game and giving us feedback for fine tuning. We anticipate it will be a couple more weeks, but we're not far off now.
Taking a break from adventuring with a card game.
Our next update will be a confirmation of the official launch date. That update could come next week, or it may come a few weeks from now. As soon as we know, you’ll know. Thank you again for sticking with us over these many years!
UPDATE 9/7/18: Chasm, developer Bit Kid's promising, procedurally generated platform adventure, finally has a release date: it's coming to PC, PlayStation 4, and Vita, on July 31st - somewhat later than it's originally anticipated launch window of 2014.
"Honor-bound to solve the mystery and restore peace to the Kingdom," explains Bit Kid, "you embark upon an epic adventure, with deadly battles against cunning monsters, exploration of ancient catacombs and castles, and powerful new equipment hidden at every turn.
"Though the overall story is the same for all players, your hero's journey will be unique: each of the rooms has been hand-designed, and behind the scenes Chasm stitches these rooms together into a one-of-a-kind world map that will be your own."
Today’s a big day for us. After years of work, we’re finally confident enough in our estimates for the remaining tasks that we can officially confirm a release time window of this summer! To commemorate this occasion, we put together our first new trailer since around the days of our Kickstarter. Hope you like it:
The good folks at Sony were nice enough to let us announce the summer release window on their PS Blog, which gets tons of visitors every day. I know this is the Steam forums, but if you have any friends who play consoles, be sure to point them there. And of course, please let your Steam friends know to add Chasm to their Steam wishlist!
Speaking of Sony, I should also mention that they were gracious enough to include Chasm in their booth at PAX East. So if any of you are going to be in Boston next week, please be sure to stop by and say hi to Dan, our business and marketing guy! Even though only the PS4 version will be playable on the show floor, the full game will be the same on PC.
For those of you who are curious about what we’ve been up to since our last update from a game development perspective, all of the spawn system changes are now done, as is the key background art, placeholder animations and enemy sound effects. We still have to polish the sound effects for the final boss and final cutscene, beef up the items, and polish out NPCs and side quests, along with general balancing and game polish. And then we’re done!
This has been an incredibly arduous undertaking - one that I’ve loved (almost) every minute of, but one that wound up being an even bigger challenge than I expected. I’m grateful for everyone’s support and patience. This community is what has been driving me. I know you guys are all looking for the most kick-ass action-adventure ever to grace a gaming system, and we’re doing everything we can to deliver on that promise. And now, we’re almost there!
Today’s a big day for us. After years of work, we’re finally confident enough in our estimates for the remaining tasks that we can officially confirm a release time window of this summer! To commemorate this occasion, we put together our first new trailer since around the days of our Kickstarter. Hope you like it:
The good folks at Sony were nice enough to let us announce the summer release window on their PS Blog, which gets tons of visitors every day. I know this is the Steam forums, but if you have any friends who play consoles, be sure to point them there. And of course, please let your Steam friends know to add Chasm to their Steam wishlist!
Speaking of Sony, I should also mention that they were gracious enough to include Chasm in their booth at PAX East. So if any of you are going to be in Boston next week, please be sure to stop by and say hi to Dan, our business and marketing guy! Even though only the PS4 version will be playable on the show floor, the full game will be the same on PC.
For those of you who are curious about what we’ve been up to since our last update from a game development perspective, all of the spawn system changes are now done, as is the key background art, placeholder animations and enemy sound effects. We still have to polish the sound effects for the final boss and final cutscene, beef up the items, and polish out NPCs and side quests, along with general balancing and game polish. And then we’re done!
This has been an incredibly arduous undertaking - one that I’ve loved (almost) every minute of, but one that wound up being an even bigger challenge than I expected. I’m grateful for everyone’s support and patience. This community is what has been driving me. I know you guys are all looking for the most kick-ass action-adventure ever to grace a gaming system, and we’re doing everything we can to deliver on that promise. And now, we’re almost there!
Time flies! Between the holidays and cranking away at our task list, I just realized it’s been 2 months since our last update. Lots of progress has been made, so here’s where we are right now.
Working on my cannonball in the Gardens.
As I described several months ago, the entire team was given a couple weeks to play through the full build and write up all of our comments, required features, bugs, etc. The agreement we had as a team is that we would synthesize all of that, discuss what’s really important, and put together our final task list out of that. No new features were to be added beyond that list. We went through that exercise back in August and have been working off of that list ever since.
I’m happy to say we’re ticking tasks off of that list at a very steady pace, and we’ve been disciplined about not adding anything new. Just to recap the progress that’s been made, here’s a partial list of what we’ve completed since going through that exercise:
Improved backtracking and world traversal system
Implemented a system for players to upgrade their Spells
Implemented auto-formatting text system for multi-lingual support
Programmed and animated the final boss battle
Animated all boss intros and deaths
Animated custom deaths for most enemies
Reworked and improved Minibosses
Sound FX for all bosses (except the final) and half of the enemies
Improved Visual FX
Improved scripted scenes
Polished the Map Screen and other UI elements
Improved pacing by interspersing some “breather” rooms with less challenge and more resources, as well as balancing combat, platforming, and puzzle rooms throughout the game
There’s also a ton of other work - a lot of which took even longer to complete than those features listed here - that we got done in that time, but some of it just wouldn’t make sense as a feature in a list. Suffice it to say, those improvements make the game feel a lot tighter and encourage players to continue exploring the world.
The final background art for the Save Rooms.
We’re now about 50% of the way through that final list. We have a date in mind that we think the game will be done and ready to ship, but I’m going to hold off on saying it here just in case my estimate isn’t accurate. Here are some of the remaining tasks:
Replacing all remaining placeholder animations and background art
Improving the enemy spawn system to make sure that every enemy type shows up in every game, as well as maintaining a healthy variety
Sound FX for the enemies in the second half of game, the final boss, as well as environmental sounds
Beefing up secondary quests
More Items & Weapon system improvements
Additional variation in environmental art & Landmarks
Populate secrets in all areas
Polish NPC dialog and sidequests
Main Menu art
Economy improvements
Difficulty balancing (this will be one of the last things we do)
Again, there are some other tasks on our list that probably only make sense to us, so I’m leaving them off this list for now. Whereas we often felt like the more progress we made the further the finish line pulled away, we’re now seeing it get closer and closer.
As we cross off each of these tasks as we complete them, the list keeps getting shorter. As always, thanks for your ongoing support and patience. We’re getting close and I’m hoping you’ll feel that the wait has been worth it!
Time flies! Between the holidays and cranking away at our task list, I just realized it’s been 2 months since our last update. Lots of progress has been made, so here’s where we are right now.
Working on my cannonball in the Gardens.
As I described several months ago, the entire team was given a couple weeks to play through the full build and write up all of our comments, required features, bugs, etc. The agreement we had as a team is that we would synthesize all of that, discuss what’s really important, and put together our final task list out of that. No new features were to be added beyond that list. We went through that exercise back in August and have been working off of that list ever since.
I’m happy to say we’re ticking tasks off of that list at a very steady pace, and we’ve been disciplined about not adding anything new. Just to recap the progress that’s been made, here’s a partial list of what we’ve completed since going through that exercise:
Improved backtracking and world traversal system
Implemented a system for players to upgrade their Spells
Implemented auto-formatting text system for multi-lingual support
Programmed and animated the final boss battle
Animated all boss intros and deaths
Animated custom deaths for most enemies
Reworked and improved Minibosses
Sound FX for all bosses (except the final) and half of the enemies
Improved Visual FX
Improved scripted scenes
Polished the Map Screen and other UI elements
Improved pacing by interspersing some “breather” rooms with less challenge and more resources, as well as balancing combat, platforming, and puzzle rooms throughout the game
There’s also a ton of other work - a lot of which took even longer to complete than those features listed here - that we got done in that time, but some of it just wouldn’t make sense as a feature in a list. Suffice it to say, those improvements make the game feel a lot tighter and encourage players to continue exploring the world.
The final background art for the Save Rooms.
We’re now about 50% of the way through that final list. We have a date in mind that we think the game will be done and ready to ship, but I’m going to hold off on saying it here just in case my estimate isn’t accurate. Here are some of the remaining tasks:
Replacing all remaining placeholder animations and background art
Improving the enemy spawn system to make sure that every enemy type shows up in every game, as well as maintaining a healthy variety
Sound FX for the enemies in the second half of game, the final boss, as well as environmental sounds
Beefing up secondary quests
More Items & Weapon system improvements
Additional variation in environmental art & Landmarks
Populate secrets in all areas
Polish NPC dialog and sidequests
Main Menu art
Economy improvements
Difficulty balancing (this will be one of the last things we do)
Again, there are some other tasks on our list that probably only make sense to us, so I’m leaving them off this list for now. Whereas we often felt like the more progress we made the further the finish line pulled away, we’re now seeing it get closer and closer.
As we cross off each of these tasks as we complete them, the list keeps getting shorter. As always, thanks for your ongoing support and patience. We’re getting close and I’m hoping you’ll feel that the wait has been worth it!
