Chasm is a game I've always been interested in playing for, I suppose, "academic" reasons. I'm someone for whom the concept of a procedurally generated metroidvania sounds incredibly appealing, but who also feels the concept is almost antithetical to what makes a meteroidvania good. I've played a fair bit of the DSVania Randomizer, but that's based on already existing games I know and love, and somewhat of a novelty. What would an original game with this map randomization concept be like? From what I'd heard, not particularly good, but I still wanted to see for myself. And after finally playing it: yeea, its mid, kind of mundane in its failings as its mostly from a lack of any real vision and not the concept itself.
Immediately upon starting the game, the whole premise colors my view of the world and rooms. I do not know where the seams are (yet), but I do know that most of this is just interchangeable rooms, not part of some grater, considered space. My mindset shifts to thinking about it more like I would a roguelike and roguelike rooms. But unlike a roguelike, I'm still expected to traverse these rooms at the pace of a metroidvania, to slowly make my way across A to B, to fill out my little map, and to memorize locations to return to later. All of this without any of the considerations a hand-crafted map would have to make this work well, nor any of the dopamine hits and crazy upgrades of a roguelike. The rooms are made as individual little challenge rooms that all blend in together, interchangeable pieces without context of what's around them. It becomes a boring slog to get through them without much in the way of rewards for it. Its disposable content taking the place of what should be a permanent, living space.
There's also the structure of the progression at large, specially with the warp rooms. Each area is an individual space disconnected from the rest, with caves leading to individual hub warp rooms. It reaally takes the wind out of a lot of the exploration, there's no chance at any interesting or surprising loop backs or connections. In a way though, it does feel like a necessary concession to even make any of this work cohesively and avoid soft-locks, which just tells me the whole endeavor was misguided from the start. Though surely, there could be more creative workarounds.
Does it do anything well? Well, technically a lot, its very competently made and clears a lot of bars, but that's not high praise. The game controls really well and is responsive. It gets pretty hard at times though, but in boring ways. The combat seems like it almost expects you to do tricks like jump canceling, and the enemy timings are kind of annoyingly tight. It just adds to the slog of traversal and exploration. The visuals are good™, lovely pixel art and animation work. Better than serviceable, its good, but it doesn't stand out? The areas are nice at a macro level, but again, the rooms blend together. The theming kills a lot of it, its very generic and not particularly inspired, and I have no interest in this world or the story/characters. Even if it had been hand-crafted, I don't think it'd be saying much.
I like that they include a CRT filter! thats nice
At some point I also just have to ask the question... why? What does it gain, from this being randomized? Sure, my playthrough is "unique" but as a first time player, it makes no difference outside the fact that I can't look up a map online. It only makes a difference if I were to replay the game, but I would have to finish it first, and like it enough to warrant going through it again. This isn't Binding of Isaac, I'm not getting wildly different builds each time, and runs aren't half an hour at most. Its a fully fledged metroidvania, it'll take hours to get through, and any new playthrough will still be structured in similar ways and the contents of it just as boring by necessity. I feel like to really make this concept stick, and make up for the deficiencies of procedural content, that you need to just throw a bunch of crazy shit in. There's a reason most of my DSVania randomizer playthroughs I not only randomize the map, but weapons, skills and enemies. There needs to be more variables at play here, and appeal from the get go. Give me more area tilesets, give me crazier randomized gear, different progression items each time, something memorable, unique, GO NUTS. Maybe some of these things are being randomized, but I have no way of knowing until I replay, and as of now what I see isn't very appealing on its face, I've yet to feel any surprise!
I've played 2.8 hours of this game, made it through 2 areas and bosses, and just unlocked my second(!) upgrade: the fucking slide. Wanna know what the first was? Power grip gloves. 2.8 hours.
Granted, I'm very particular about exploration. What have my efforts awarded me with?... some materials?... What about gear? I have a myriad of lame defensive gear, basic, generic swords, and some 'spells' (knife throw, axe throw, 2 secs of orbs circling around me). Its all so so so milquetoast! It clearly takes inspiration from the likes of Castlevania, but it almost goes wayyyy out of its way to copy it without any of the sauce or spice. How long until I get cool swords and abilities, choices in my playstyle, if ever? And there's no getting around the most generic of fantasy settings and enemy rosters. The sheer variety of gear that something like Symphony of the Night has feels almost wasted in that game, unless you self impose yourself less effective gear, this is the perfect setup to make that kind of variety shine!! It might fundamentally wind up different from a metroidvania, but the appeal would at least add up.
Once I unlocked that slide, it was very clear I couldn't progress and had to "backtrack" to areas I could slide under. And I just, can't see myself playing any more now, I'm kinda done? I KNOW there's a slide room...somewhere in the first area, but I really can't be bothered to go hunting through every open area on my map to figure out which one it was. (This is where, had I foreseen this, I would've used a map marker, but alas). Again, there's nothing to make its position unique or memorable, nor does it hold any importance spatially, its just where the dice rolled that keyhole to. I won't bother to go to it now, and I won't bother to replay the same slog just so I can feel special cause it dice rolled elsewhere this time. There's apparently some daily challenge modes and the like, and I don't know if they're any better, but what I've seen of the base game does not encourage me to try.
I'm probably very late to commenting on this game. I came in with low expectations and still wound up disappointed, its just kinda lame at a macro level? even if individual pieces are nice, its not bad in an interesting way, and just makes me want to see a better go at this with more going on. If you just wanna walk around and beat up monsters its not bad, but there's a lot better I could be playing.