We released a couple patches over the weekend, including a brand new alternate Chiptune soundtrack! The soundtrack can be changed in the Audio options and works with both the normal game and Arcade mode. If you dig it be sure to check out the composers Bandcamp page!
Change-list:
- added alternate chiptune soundtrack
- added glow effect for arcade lanterns containing spells
- added alt powerup and levelup sfx for chip soundtrack
- added missing translations
- various fixes and adjustments for arcade mode
- fixed HP not refilling fully after loading game with augmenting equipment
- fixed several enemies detecting player through ground
Patch 1.058 Released
We released two small updates today back to back, mainly dealing with enhancements the community requested for Arcade mode, as well as the option to skip the intro if you already completed the game.
1.057 + 1.058 Change-list:
added option to skip game intro (requires completed game)
arcade: added end of stage score screen
arcade: added no hit boss drops
arcade: added illumination scroll
arcade: added parachute to magma area
arcade: changed 'no hit' bonus to per stage
added more palette variations for pedestals
fixed several new rooms
Patch 1.056 Released
We're back with another update! The focus on this one was expanding the core room set for more path variation, as well as adding in some new background graphics for more visual variation. I also took some time to revise and clean up older rooms as well.
Change-list:
added over 60 rooms for more path variation (new games only)
added new background graphics to all areas
revised rooms and improved styling
updated game controller database
updated to FNA 19.03
balancing tweaks
fixed several enemies walking off platforms
fixed backdashing into push blocks
fixed poison damage cancelling warp scroll
Happy Valentine's Day!
Happy Valentine’s Day! We thought we’d do something a little special this year to show our appreciation for everyone’s support. As a token of our gratitude, we present to you the official Chasm Instruction Booklet! Inspired by the games we grew with, it contains everything from control diagrams to tips and tricks (and don’t forget that all important Notes page). We hope you enjoy!
Happy Lunar New Year! In celebration, Chasm is currently on sale for 25% off. But wait, that's not all! In addition to the sale, we have also released version 1.054 which contains new items, improved controller support, and many tweaks and fixes. The full change-list:
- added new items Throwing Sword, Summon Scroll, and Luck Scroll (new games only)
- added new Ladorian font for tablets with improved translation effect
- added profile icon for completed games (must be resaved to take effect)
- added FX for Learning scroll
- added random dark rooms to arcade mode
- updated to FNA 19.02
- updated game controller database to support several hundred more controllers
- increased speed of time slow potion
- fixed rare crash in final boss battle with time slow potion
- fixed area connection symbols drawing under room borders
Thanks for all your support, and happy new year!
1.053 Released - Gamepad Mapping
Chasm has been updated again with another often requested feature: mappable gamepad controls! We also took the opportunity to revamp the button graphics and tidy up a few input related things. Here is the full change-list:
- added customizable gamepad controls
- added new button graphics for all platforms
- added button graphics to control mapping screen
- adjusted drop rates
- fixed rare crash with enemy status effects
- fixed enemy getting status effect after death
- fixed crusher collisions
- fixed treasure chest spawning animation for boss no hit in arcade mode
- fixed yes/no prompts sometimes overflowing convo bubble
- fixed keyboard key labels sometimes overflowing button graphic
1.050 Released - Language Pack
Happy New Year! We're excited to announce that Chasm 1.050 is now available. While the major feature is language support for 5 new languages (Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese), we’ve also made improvements to the world, backtracking, item drops, and much more. A huge thanks goes out to our community for all the feedback and support!
Here is the full list of changes:
added translations for Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese
added chance for Unique and Legendary item drops with bonus stats
added new shortcuts in Mines and Catacombs to help with backtracking (new games only)
added Savepoint to Mines shortcut hub
added Inventory sorting by Name, Value, and Type
added 4th treasure chest room to Mines, Catacombs, Gardens and Keep areas (new games only)
added several new rooms (new games only)
updated to FNA 19.01 with new audio engine (fixes "Out of Memory" crashes on some machines)
changed Portals to ask for destination after more than 2 unlocked
changed Map screen Area connection labels from words to icons
various improvements to UI
various tweaks to drop rates, player speed, spell upgrades, etc
fixed rare glitching into ground when walljumping in corners
fixed interaction status message spamming
fixed item descriptions sometimes overflowing box bounds
fixed stray character on Name Entry screen when opened with keyboard
fixed Temple Guards glaive not being destroyed on death
fixed missing boss flag before final boss
fixed wasp buzzing playing after death
fixed crouching in spikes without taking damage
We'll have more coming soon, so please stay tuned!
First Free DLC: The Guildean Arcade Pack Now Live!
It's 1992, and the arcade is the place to be for the most advanced and challenging experiences around. A mysterious new game has appeared that has all the kids at school talking. This game is different every time you play it, and the leaderboards reflect only those with the quickest wits to combat its twisting dungeons, ferocious enemies, and unpredictable nature.
When people first play Chasm, many don’t realize that there is a robust world building engine powering it. After all, it plays like a good old fashioned dungeon crawling Metroidvania. We had tons of ideas of ways we could leverage the procedural dungeon creation engine, so we set to work and built our first DLC for Chasm: the Guilean Arcade Pack. And best of all, it’s free!
Unlike the main mode, which generates a full world map when you start up your campaign, the new Arcade Mode generates a new layout of the world on the fly. Leave a room and come back, and it’ll be a completely new room. You have 8 minutes to explore each area of the world. If you don’t reach the next area or die along the way, your game is over.
The Arcade Mode is really three modes in one:
Daily Challenge: Every day you get one shot to leave your mark on Karthas history. Stay alive, progress as far as you can, and rack up your kill count and reach the next area as quickly as possible for maximum points to earn your spot at the top of the daily leaderboard.
Weekly Challenge: Same idea as the Daily Challenge, but you can take your time and get to know the map. Play through as many times as you like, finding the best shortcuts, loot, and power-ups along the way. Your highest score for the week will be recorded for posterity.
Practice: No one’s keeping score but you, so just have fun in this mode. Use the randomly generated seed to explore a new dungeon just for you, or enter your own seed number to explore a dungeon you’re already familiar with.
The Guildean Arcade Pack is currently only available on Steam, but we are working hard to bring it to all platforms as soon as we are able.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!
In addition to the new Arcade Mode, we’ve been adding a bunch of improvements to the game based on player feedback since launch. Combat should feel a lot more responsive, and enemies will react more realistically. (Well, as realistic as we think a zombie in an underground catacomb might react!) We won’t go into all the little tweaks and adjustments here, but if you’d like to find out all of the detail, you can check out our release notes page.
Lastly, we'd like to quickly mention that we are participating in the Steam Halloween sale and the game is currently 10% off. Grab it while it's hot!
Happy hunting!
Chasm is Now Available!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shTHtaF4ASA
That’s a wrap everyone! Chasm is done, and it’s now being played by people worldwide. To say that it’s a surreal feeling would be an understatement. I’ve done pretty much nothing but Chasm for the last 5-6 years and now it’s out of my hands.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. Some of you may have heard about us years ago and some just recently. Regardless of when you became a part of this community, you were part of something special. Even in the indie scene, it’s rare for a ragtag group of aspiring developers to be able to keep hammering away at a project year after year until it was done right. We learned a ton along the way and never compromised. With the help of my best friends and teammates, we all made Chasm the best we could.
I wrote a retrospective recap of our development journey for the PlayStation Blog, which you can read here. If you’re too PCMR to check out a PlayStation blog, the tl;dr version is that the Bit Kid team is composed of old friends. Our lead programmer, Tim, and I have been friends since high school. Our composer, Jimi, and I have been friends since college. And the rest of the team - Glauber, Dan, and other Dan - have all become lifelong friends too.
Even though Chasm is now officially out, we’re not done yet. We’ve already got ideas for new game modes we’d like to add. New platforms to be on. We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop every step of the way.
Thanks for being a part of this journey, and stay tuned for more!
James
Chasm Launches July 31st!
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!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BL162RQXKg
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!
