Chasm, Old School-Inspired 2D Platformer, Arrives on PS4

Don’t you just love it when lovely, little indie gems like this one appear out of nowhere? We have known about Chasm for some time now, but it’s easy to overlook smaller releases, especially with such a crowded Fall 2018 launch schedule. Let’s recap for a bit. Chasm is a beautiful, pixelated, Metroidvania-inspired platformer, which offers old-school 2D mechanics, in addition to rich RPG elements.

Bit Kid Inc.’s James Petruzzi, Director of Chasm, took to the PlayStation Blog to explain all the challenges that came with working on such an ambitious project. He also talked about some of the lessons the developer learned in the process:

Start small and finish something. It’s easy to come up with lots of little ideas, get them up and running on the screen, and then move on to the next thing. Finishing is hard. Knowing when to put down the paintbrush and call it good is hard. You need to know how to set that end goal and recognize when you’ve reached it. This is much easier to do with a small, well-defined scope of a game than a sprawling world with tons of enemies and weapons.

Have a support network. This is far easier said than done. It’s cliché for me to say that I couldn’t have done this without the support of Trang, but it’s true. If I had to choose between Chasm and her, I’d choose her. She never asked me to make that choice. She worked the booth at PAX with me, went over accounting spreadsheets with me, and never complained that we never went out, never took vacations.

Work with your friends. Most people will disagree with me on this, but if there’s one thing besides Trang that kept me sane, it was that the long hours were spent with people I genuinely enjoy spending time with. We all lived far from each other (I’m in Maryland, Tim’s in Atlanta, and Jimi’s near Pittsburgh), but we talk every day on Skype. 80% of that time was productive. 20% was laughing and joking around.

We were lucky enough to experience Chasm at PSX 2018, so here’s a bit more info:

What’s good is an old-school look and feel if there isn’t a rockin’ soundtrack to accompany the visuals? James Stevulak has been tapped for Chasm’s audio, having previously contributed to the developer’s earlier titles 48 Chambers and Take Arms when they were still Discord Games. The result is audio that should instantly remind players of classic PS1/SNES-era RPGs, when most games had moved beyond chiptunes to incorporate the more advanced audio synthesizers available in those consoles.

You can review more in our PSX Chasm preview.

As we learned earlier this month, Chasm is available as of July 31, 2018 for PlayStation 4 and PS Vita.

Are you going to pick this up? Do you enjoy retro-style platformers? Let us know in the comments below.

[Source: PlayStation Blog]