Metroidvania-Style Chasm Finally Gets a Release Date for PlayStation 4, PC

For the longest time, the Metroidvania SNES style adventure Chasm has been in development, making a number of appearances at trade shows and promising to deliver some great old-school entertainment. But we were wondering if the game would ever see a release date. Fortunately for us, it looks like it’s finally happening.

In a new PlayStation Blog post, game director James Pertuzzi announced that Bit Kid, the developer behind the project, has finally finished up development, meaning that we’re getting the game this month!

Chasm is set to arrive on July 31 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and PC, going for the price of $19.99. It’s unknown yet if the game will be Cross-Buy or require individual purchases across both PlayStation platforms but fingers crossed we get a two-for-one deal.

“Although we’ve been very public about our development process, there’s no way everyone can keep up with every game in development, so here’s a quick summary of the game: Chasm is an RPG-adventure in which you play the role of a new recruit who’s sent to investigate why a nearby mining town has shut down. As you explore, you discover all sorts of supernatural creatures you need to battle to uncover the mystery of what’s happening with the town, and how you can save them,” Pertuzzi explained.

“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.

“But that’s not to say that everything’s completely random; 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 most titles in this vein, 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.”

The game is a lot of fun based upon what we’ve played thus far, so we can’t wait to get our hands on it and run through some more. You can read more about the title here.

Check out the launch trailer above and prepare for some retro goodness!