Chasm Review

Brothers and sisters. I’m just gonna tell you know. I really love this game. If you want to just skip the rest of the review, feel free. You know how it’s gonna end.

I picked up Chasm by chance, probably in one of those Humble Whatevers. I likely did to based on the look and description of the game.

It’s got that old 16 bit look an feel to it. It’s an action adventure game. It plays like those Castlevania games we just finished reviewing. But in a lot of ways it’s better than most of them.

In Chasm we take on the part of a young, nameless, aspiring knight. We’ve been given the task of investigating the happenings of a mining town whose resources are pretty important for this ongoing conflict. But those same said resources have stopped being delivered. We need to figure out why and get those wagons moving again.

We reach the town and find it totally deserted save the mayor. He tells us that folks have gone down into the mines and never come back, so he sealed the mine shut until help could arrive. It has arrived.

On the way through the mines we’ll find and rescue the villagers, meet an archeologist and learn some of the strange history of the region, and at the end of it all hopefully we can save the day.

Gameplay is standard action adventure exploration stuff. We travel a map (randomly generated in this game, which is neat), fight enemies, locate loot, gain experience and skills, and deal with the occasional big baddie. In terms of what you can and can’t do there isn’t really anything new added to the formula here. What makes the game a little more interesting though is the randomly generated maps. There are some locations that are set and will never change, but the way you go from A to B is going to be different every time.

Our hero here comes into town, basically, with as little as possible. A short sword and a fancy shirt. In the mines you’ll find treasure chests that will contain new weapons, armor, accessories, magic sub weapons, and a bunch of other stuff. Equipment comes in a variety of different types. The weapons go anywhere from small daggers and punching weapons up to spears and whips. Each piece of equipment has a “level”. Think Diablo. You can have a regular short sword, a magic short sword, or an epic short sword. What you get and when is randomized. You may go an entire game and never have an epic piece of equipment. You may have a full set by the time you’re 30% though. The different levels (white/blue/yellow) generally just offer extra stat boosts.

Sub weapons need to be found and unlocked. You keep them forever and can cycle through them. Your basic throwing knife and axe are here along with some new ones like a shuriken. These can be leveled up in town at an NPC if you bring them the proper materials.

As you go through the mine you will find and rescue NPCs who, back in town, will either be vendors, give you quests you can complete for rewards, or both.

Combat is simple to do but takes some mastery to get through the game without a lot of death. The game is hard. Our hero is a little on the squishy side, no matter how good your equipment and how high you level up you’ll never be a tank in this game. I like that.

Graphically I think the game is great. It really lives in that 16/32 bit era pretty well. The sprite work is good, enemy designs are great, the different areas and their look and feel is really good. Very solid graphics all around.

The music in this game is also fantastic. The soundtrack is really good and it’s one that I went out and bought soon as I finished the game because I loved it so much. Bonus is there’s an “original” mode but also a “chiptune” mode if you want the music to be less orchestral and more bleep and bloop. I like that too.

I’ve played through this game, I don’t know, maybe 5 times total. Once on my own, one as a Let’s Play and maybe on stream a time or two. I just started playing it again a day or two ago for fun, because I do think this game is very fun. It looks, feels, and sounds great. It’s challenging without being head bashingly hard, it’s totally doable but you have to work at it a little bit.

It’s exactly what I want out of a game like this.

Bit Kid, the developer and publisher, is working on a new game right now called Wolfhound and I will absolutely be picking that up. They also did a port of Knytt Classic as well which is a wonderful little puzzle platformer adventure game that I’m sure some of you know. That just came out in August of 2026 and is free on Steam.