Set the Scene
I didn’t know a damn thing about ChainStaff before I played it. This wasn’t sitting on my Steam wishlist, it wasn’t a game I’d been following for months, and I hadn’t seen some big marketing campaign convincing me that I needed to pay attention. I stumbled across it while browsing upcoming releases on Steam, clicked on the trailer, and immediately thought, “Oh shit, what is this?”
The trailer was so aggressively weird and badass that I felt like I owed it to myself to find out what the hell ChainStaff was actually about. After spending some time with it, I can safely say that the game is every bit as strange as that trailer made it look, and somehow it is even more fun than I expected it to be.
ChainStaff is a 2D action-platformer that feels like it was pulled out of another era of gaming and then given a modern mechanical makeover. It has the kind of throwback sensibilities I associate with older action games, but the movement is fast, the combat is fluid, and its central weapon gives the entire experience a mechanical identity that very few games can match.
The premise certainly isn’t going to win any awards for subtlety. Extraterrestrial spores have invaded Earth, transforming living creatures into disgusting alien monstrosities while even the environment itself begins to mutate. Sergeant Jesse Varlette and his team are nearly wiped out, but Varlette survives after one of the alien organisms attaches itself to his head and keeps his heart and nervous system functioning. Naturally, this horrifying parasite also gives him access to an equally horrifying alien weapon. And that’s where ChainStaff really gets going.
Gameplay
The ChainStaff Is One Hell of a Weapon
The easiest way to explain ChainStaff is to say that the ChainStaff is basically the entire game. That might sound like a problem, but it isn’t. The developers have taken one weapon and somehow turned it into a weapon, grappling hook, platform, shield, traversal tool, puzzle-solving device, and general-purpose “get the hell out of here” button. It is one of the most versatile gameplay mechanics I’ve encountered this year, and more importantly, it never feels like a gimmick.
You can throw the ChainStaff at enemies like a javelin and recall it back to you, much like the Leviathan Axe in God of War. You can charge it up for a devastating attack, use it to pin enemies down, or embed it into surfaces to create temporary platforms. You can throw it into the ground and use it like a ladder, stick it into a falling pillar to temporarily stop it, or create a barrier that prevents enemies from crossing a particular area.
Then there is the grappling mechanic. You can attach the ChainStaff to walls and swing across gaps like some kind of psychotic Spider-Man. You can use it to pull yourself upward, lower yourself down safely, or even save yourself from falling to your death by quickly latching onto something above you. The level design constantly gives you opportunities to figure out how this strange weapon can be used to reach the next platform, avoid an enemy, or solve a problem.
The more you upgrade it, the more ridiculous it becomes. Finding ChainStaff fragments throughout the levels allows you to extend its range, which only makes an already incredibly useful tool even more absurdly effective. That’s what makes the ChainStaff so satisfying. It isn’t simply a cool weapon that happens to have a grappling hook attached to it. The entire game has been designed around the idea that this one tool can solve problems in multiple ways. You are constantly thinking about whether you should throw it, recall it, swing from it, block with it, use it as a platform, or simply use it to beat the absolute shit out of whatever creature is trying to kill you. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game where a single gameplay mechanic has been this consistently useful.
Combat That Keeps You Moving
When you aren’t swinging around with the ChainStaff, you’re shooting things. Your primary gun operates like a twin-stick shooter, allowing you to aim independently of your movement and fire continuously. The controls are simple enough that you can pick them up almost immediately, but ChainStaff gets its depth from forcing you to constantly combine your weapons, movement, and defensive options.
There are no real breaks when you’re in the middle of an encounter. You need to be thinking about where you are standing, what enemies are approaching, whether you should shoot, whether you should swing away, whether you can block an incoming projectile, or whether there’s a better position you can reach with the ChainStaff.
That constant decision-making is one of the things I enjoyed most about the game. ChainStaff can be challenging, but I rarely felt like the game was simply beating me over the head with artificial difficulty. When I died, I usually understood what went wrong. Maybe I didn’t move quickly enough. Maybe I missed an opportunity to block. Maybe I didn’t recognize an enemy’s attack pattern. Maybe I got greedy.
That distinction matters. We’re living in an era where a lot of games have borrowed heavily from Souls-like design, and sometimes that means “difficulty” becomes synonymous with making the player miserable. ChainStaff understands that a challenging game can still be fun. Even when I had to replay a section or fight a boss again, I usually came away thinking about what I could do differently rather than blaming the game for screwing me over. That made failure feel productive rather than frustrating.
Boss Fights That Actually Use the Mechanics
The boss encounters are another major highlight because they aren’t simply giant health bars that happen to hit harder than normal enemies. Many of them feel like action puzzles built specifically around the ChainStaff. One early boss, for example, is a massive creature whose mouth is filled with teeth that continuously grow back. You’re trying to damage the vulnerable area inside its throat while avoiding getting completely devoured. The ChainStaff can actually be embedded inside its mouth to prevent it from closing completely, turning your primary weapon into part of the solution to the boss itself. That’s the kind of design I love.
Another boss is a giant crab-like creature that fires projectiles, spawns smaller enemies from its body, and forces you to attack a vulnerable spot underneath it. Once you damage that area, its arms become vulnerable enough for you to use the ChainStaff to swing around them and reach the weak spots on its head.
That fight took me around 30 minutes to finally beat, but I wasn’t sitting there thinking, “Jesus Christ, I just want this to be over.” I was having a genuinely good time figuring the damn thing out. Not every boss is perfect. Some can become downright maddening when they introduce surprise attacks or unpredictable phases that essentially require memorization. Still, even those encounters usually feel like they are asking you to understand the game’s mechanics rather than simply survive an enormous damage sponge.
Ten Levels That Rarely Feel the Same
ChainStaff features ten handcrafted maps, and one of the things I appreciated most was how much effort went into making each area feel different.
Every level has its own visual identity, color palette, enemies, environmental hazards, and traversal challenges. One area might lean heavily into reds and yellows and give off a strange Martian atmosphere, while another completely changes the palette and feels like you’re somewhere else entirely.
The same goes for the enemies. I honestly don’t know if I’ve played a game with this much enemy variety in such a relatively short experience. Just when I thought I had figured out what the game was going to throw at me, I would reach another level and suddenly have a completely different collection of creatures trying to murder me.
There are flying enemies that swarm you, creatures with mace-like appendages, alien dogs that leap at you, enemies that detach their heads and fire them at you, and countless other grotesque creatures that all have their own methods of trying to ruin your day. And these aren’t simply the same enemies with different colors slapped on them. They actually behave differently and force you to approach encounters differently.
The level design benefits from that variety. Each map has multiple routes, with additional paths often locked behind upgrades or abilities you acquire later. That gives ChainStaff a light Metroidvania flavor without turning it into a full-blown Metroidvania. Thankfully, the platforming is just as thoughtfully designed as the combat. When you see an environmental object, you can usually understand pretty quickly that it has some purpose. The game is constantly teaching you how to interact with its spaces without needing to spell everything out.
The Weirdest Swiss Army Knife in Gaming
There are plenty of moments where ChainStaff feels like someone asked, “What if we let the player do this?” and then never told them no.
Need to cross a huge gap? Swing. Need to get higher? Grapple. Need to stop something from falling? Stick the ChainStaff into it. Need a platform? Make one. Need to block a projectile? Throw the ChainStaff into the environment. Need to get out of a dangerous situation? Grapple yourself away. Need to kill something? Well, you have a giant alien spear attached to your arm, so go nuts. It is ridiculous, but the game commits to the idea so completely that the absurdity becomes part of its charm.
The visual presentation reinforces that identity. ChainStaff is unapologetically grotesque, psychedelic, and strange. There is blood everywhere, enemies explode in disgusting ways, and some of the death animations are spectacularly nasty. I got crushed by environmental objects more than once, and the game is more than happy to show you the horrifying consequences.
The animation work deserves a lot of credit here as well. Enemies don’t simply disappear when they die. They react to attacks in ways that make the combat feel visceral, and the various ways they can kill Varlette give the game a surprising amount of personality. It’s gross as hell, but it’s gross in a way that fits the game’s identity.
Pros
The soundtrack might be the most underrated part of ChainStaff. The action sequences are filled with heavy metal riffs, synths, and bombastic musical flourishes that make the whole thing feel like you’re playing through some bizarre sci-fi rock concert. Then the game shifts into its story sequences and swaps that out for atmospheric science-fiction music. It works.
The music matches the visual style almost perfectly, and the heavy guitar riffs make the combat feel even more intense. There are games where I can barely remember the soundtrack after finishing them. ChainStaff is not one of those games. The music is part of the reason the game feels so unapologetically itself.
Steam Deck Is Where This Game Shines
ChainStaff is another one of those indie games that feels like it was practically designed for the Steam Deck. It runs well, looks great on the smaller screen, and its relatively compact structure makes it perfect for handheld sessions. I never encountered any major bugs during my playthrough, and the game maintained the kind of performance I want from a handheld experience.
It’s also the kind of game where you can sit down intending to play for twenty minutes and suddenly realize you’ve been playing for two hours. A standard playthrough took me around seven hours to reach the credits, but there is considerably more to find if you want to dig into the levels. You can replay completed stages to hunt down missing soldiers, fragments, upgrades, and other collectibles, and I could easily see completionists pushing the experience toward 15–20 hours. For a $15 launch price, that’s a damn good proposition. You aren’t getting a massive 40-hour adventure, but you’re getting a tightly designed action game where practically every hour feels purposeful.
Cons
The Upgrade System Forces Some Tough Choices
The game does have an interesting upgrade system, although I’m not completely sold on how restrictive it can become. As you explore the levels, you’ll encounter injured soldiers who give you a choice. You can rescue them, eat their hearts, or eat their brains. Yes, ChainStaff is that kind of game.
Each decision affects your progression differently. Eating hearts increases your maximum health, while consuming brains improves your gun power. Other choices can improve your technology and equipment.
The system creates an interesting risk-and-reward structure because you can’t simply collect everything and max out every category. Your choices determine what kind of Varlette you’re building.
The problem is that there are only so many people to make those choices with. That means choosing health over firepower isn’t just a temporary decision. You’re potentially locking yourself into a particular upgrade path, and that’s especially significant because health is incredibly valuable in a game this challenging. I actually like the concept. I just wish there were more opportunities to engage with it so that players had more room to experiment.
Not Everything Needs to Be Killed
One of the stranger problems I ran into was realizing that ChainStaff sometimes makes it more fun to avoid combat entirely. The combat is excellent, so you might assume the game would constantly incentivize you to kill everything in your path. But there were several moments where I started asking myself why I was fighting a particular group of enemies at all.
Enemies can drop health, but you have a limit to how much health you can carry. If I could simply swing over a group of enemies, grapple across the environment, block a few attacks, and keep moving, there wasn’t always a compelling reason to stop and fight.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the freedom to bypass enemies is sometimes great. But it creates a strange disconnect between how much effort the developers put into creating such a fantastic enemy roster and how little incentive there can be to actually engage with some of it.
I often found myself thinking, “Why am I doing the job of exterminator when I can just Spider-Man my way through this entire level?” And honestly, sometimes I did.
The Map Is Rough
If there is one area where ChainStaff feels noticeably behind the rest of its design, it’s the map. First, accessing it is unnecessarily cumbersome. You have to hit Start and then go into the menu to reach the area map. Something as simple as assigning the map to a dedicated button would have made far more sense.
More importantly, the map itself isn’t particularly useful. It gives you some valuable information, including how many fragments and soldiers remain in an area, but actually understanding where you are in relation to checkpoints and the surrounding level can be difficult. The checkpoint markers aren’t always easy to interpret, and the map doesn’t provide the kind of clarity that the rest of the level design deserves.
It’s frustrating because the game itself is generally very good at communicating where you can go and what you can interact with. The map feels like the one part of the experience where that philosophy breaks down.
A Story I Wanted to Care About More
The story is probably the weakest part of ChainStaff. I appreciate that Mommy’s Best Games actually tried to give this bizarre world a narrative. The idea of an extraterrestrial organism attaching itself to a soldier’s head and keeping him alive while simultaneously giving him control over an alien weapon is ridiculous in exactly the way this game should be ridiculous.
But I never really cared about what was happening. The story mostly felt like a mechanism for getting me from one gloriously disgusting level to another. I wanted more context about Varlette, the alien invasion, the parasite, and the world being transformed around him. The premise is interesting enough that I think the game could have gotten significantly more mileage out of it.
There are also NPCs scattered throughout the levels who appear to be helping you fight enemies, but I often wondered why they were even there. They don’t seem to contribute much mechanically, and their dialogue can sometimes amount to telling me that there are enemies nearby. Yes. I know. Everything is trying to kill me. Still, this is a relatively minor complaint because ChainStaff never pretends that its story is the main attraction. The gameplay is clearly the star of the show.
Is This a Good Single Player Experience?
Absolutely. In fact, ChainStaff is exactly the kind of game that reminds me why I enjoy covering indie games in the first place. I went into this expecting a fun little action-platformer that would entertain me for a few hours. Instead, I found one of the most mechanically creative games I’ve played this year. The ChainStaff is such a strong central mechanic that it carries the entire experience, and the developers consistently find new ways to make you think about how you can use it.
The combat is fast and satisfying. The platforming is excellent. The enemy variety is ridiculous. The bosses are memorable. The levels are visually distinct. The soundtrack kicks ass. The Steam Deck performance is excellent.
There are problems. The map is poor, the story doesn’t do enough, the upgrade system can feel restrictive, and some encounters don’t provide much incentive to actually fight instead of simply swinging past everything. But none of those issues change the fact that ChainStaff is incredibly fun. And fun is what ultimately matters most here.
Why This Passion Score?
An 83 Passion Score might actually undersell how surprised I was by ChainStaff. I genuinely did not expect this game to become one of my favorites of the year. I had never heard of it before stumbling across its Steam page, and the trailer was basically the only reason I gave it a chance. What I found was a game that immediately established its own identity and then refused to compromise on it.
The ChainStaff is the obvious centerpiece, but it’s everything surrounding it that made me keep playing. I loved figuring out new ways to use it. I loved discovering new enemies and wondering what ridiculous creature the next level was going to throw at me. I loved the boss fights, even when they kicked my ass. I loved the soundtrack. I loved the disgusting visual style. Most importantly, I loved how much the game made me think while I was playing it.
There was always another decision to make. Should I attack? Should I block? Should I swing? Should I grapple? Should I run? Should I use the ChainStaff to create a platform? Should I take the safer route or try something more aggressive?
That constant engagement made ChainStaff feel addictive. It’s like opening a bag of Lay’s potato chips. You tell yourself you’re going to play one more section, and suddenly you’ve eaten half the bag.
The reason the Passion Score isn’t even higher is because I couldn’t completely overlook the game’s weaker areas. I wanted more from the story, the map genuinely sucks, and the upgrade system could have given players more freedom to experiment. But those flaws never outweighed how much fun I was having. I was sleeping on this game before I played it. I’m glad I woke up.
