It may want to be a new version of Bioshock and Dead Space, but Chasmal Fear misses the mark.
I was quite hopeful for Chasmal Fear when I first loaded it up. Showing inspiration from Bioshock’s underwater world and Dead Space’s cosmic horror mutations, it had the potential to be a fun low budget romp. Sadly, it doesn’t hit any of the targets it’s aiming for and feels more like a chore than a subnautical horror story.
You play as the absurdly named Codename Surge, and you experience the game through his bodycam. Normally I wouldn’t mention this, but Chasmal Fear makes a point about it being a bodycam game. In reality, this is a first person shooter with a very wobbly camera. I didn’t really get the feeling that this was being shot from a body camera, as it just felt like you were moving around with very exaggerated head bobbing whilst your gun was dead centre of the screen.
Anyway, Codename Surge is sent to the underwater City of Magnus. This is where the Bioshock influences come in, as this is supposedly a city populated by the world’s greatest minds who are carrying out extensive ocean exploration and may have uncovered something that should have been left far beneath the waves. I like the premise here, and feel there’s a lot that could be done with it. I don’t think Chasmal Fear really capitalises on any of it though, as most of the enemies seem to be generic zombies and monsters rather than the remnants of the scientific community that would have resided there, and what was actually uncovered isn’t really all that interesting. Still, a nice set up.
You’ll spend most of your time wandering around corridors, completing objectives like finding keycards, access codes, and audio logs whilst fighting off monsters with the small selection of basic weaponry you’ll find down there. Combat is pretty generic, as most enemies just run at you or spit at you from a distance, with the only difference being if they have more health or move faster. Guns feel solid enough and, early on at least, there seems to be enough ammo to get by.
I quite like the mechanic of some monsters mutating and reviving after death unless you use your knife on them. This reminds me of the Crimson Heads from the remake of Resident Evil, with you needing to use your serum loaded knife if a body glows red when they die. Annoyingly, there’s absolutely no indication if you have any serum loaded in your knife in spite of you picking it up in the environment. Did I have enough to manage? Should I go and scavenge some? No idea! At least the guns give you an ammo count if you hold the G key.
The most egregious thing of all though, is that this is another shooter that includes exploding enemies that charge at you. Even the best games manage to get these kamikaze foes wrong, and Chasmal Fear doesn’t do itself any favours by including them right behind doors giving you no chance to respond before half your health vanishes in a flash. The fact that save points are so far apart makes this even more frustrating, as it’s easy to lose twenty minutes of progress for the simple act of opening a door.
Ignoring the distant save points though, some of the level design is actually quite nice. The first area feels quite well thought out, and though some of the following regions are harder to navigate, I feel the confusion you feel makes sense narratively: You’re sent to this city you’ve never been to and you’re going to get lost. Areas weave back into each other as you progress, which is nice, though I’d have liked those save points to be in the hub areas that you keep navigating back to instead of respawning enemies.
On another positive note, the devs do seem to be listening to the community, lining up patches based on what people have said are issues. They had already implemented additional save points in the early portion of the game before I started playing, so heaven only knows what it was like before. Whilst I may not want to recommend Chasmal Fear terribly highly, it’s a solid effort for a two-person team when they’re willing to put in the extra time after release like this. Hopefully they can squash the bugs that seem to keep cropping up. Nothing game breaking yet, but I experienced a lot of disappearing enemies and visual bugs.
Speaking of the visuals, they’re solid enough, although not exactly impressive considering this uses Unreal Engine 5. My PC seemed to struggle with the framerate when going into new areas, but would level out in due course. The sound was pretty good though, with some better voice acting that I would have expected. I liked how a lot of the game had no music at all as it really sold the atmosphere early on. I’d have rather the devs had kept it that way throughout rather than feel the need to add it for more intense scenes.
Chasmal Fear is a hard game to recommend. The gameplay is frustrating and the story doesn’t do anything especially impressive, and whilst the bugs aren’t outrageous, there are enough of them to keep distracting you. I didn’t get a chance to try out the co-op mode, but by many accounts it just increases the bug count, so perhaps it’s best I steer clear for now. Hopefully with enough patches this will become something more worth diving into, but for now I wouldn’t suggest you dip your toes in.
Chasmal Fear is available now on PC.
