The Chant: We tried a new survival combining horror and new age

The horror adventure genre is one of the most successful in years. Good news for fans, but it’s true that the downside is a fairly saturated market with similar products. For development teams that decide to develop a new game of this genre, it’s increasingly difficult to come out and get noticed: if you create something original or want to follow a more traditional way of doing it. Characterize your work with a distinctive feature.

Developed by The Chant, a third-person horror adventure. Brass Coin and published by Prime Matter, choose this option. During Gamescom 2022 in Cologne, we had the opportunity to play around forty minutes of this new horror adventure coming to PC, Xbox Series X / S and Playstation 5 on November 3, 2022. Tried by The ChantWe tell you the special side of this horror adventure.

History and setting

There History The plot of The Chant begins with the protagonist Jess arriving on the remote Isle of Glory to attend a spiritual retreat. He was persuaded by his best friend Kim, who found peace of mind by following the advice of Prismatic Science guru Tyler. Jess arrives on the island, meets the other members of Glory’s commune, and joins in a cleansing song with them all. But something is going terribly wrong: Who seems possessed, and the negative energy of the participants opens a door to Gloom, a dark dimension of horrors that humanity cannot understand. During our testing, we collected a large number of collections, both in print and on celluloid films, to be reproduced on some projectors scattered around the island. It seems Tyler inherited Glory Island and its commune from his parents, and his father was the founder of this Prismatic Science we hear about throughout the adventure.

The demo played was filled with many tips, breadcrumbs that do not keep you full, on the contrary, make you hungry. Because from the perspective of the game, which we will tell you shortly, The Chant looks very ordinary, its history and content. adjustment it’s clearly a tribute to ’70s slasher movies, and the combination of horror element with new age material is absolutely fascinating. In a market that is increasingly fascinated by sci-fi horror mediums, where most of the time is wasted rather than valued, The Chantatmosphere It’s very different: rather than horror, we’re dealing with a balanced mix of action and survival, because there’s no real horror in this game, but what’s palpable is the constant suspense and mystery.

Items are also forwarded by someone graphic design which greatly enhances the scenarios: although the animations seem a bit vague, the movements of the protagonists’ bodies and faces are somewhat connected, while the island of Glory is truly beautiful, with lush forests where moonbeams glide through.

Mind, Body and Spirit

As expected, The Chant runs on pretty predetermined fun tracks, but integrates a new-age component into the combat system and character development. Jess’ stats that the player should watch are basically three indicators: Mind, Body and Spirit. Mind is Jess’ ability to resist the horrors of Gloom, often referred to as sanity in Cthulhu-themed role-playing games; The more Jess is exposed to fear, the less it will diminish. When Jess’s mind is completely exhausted, the hero falls victim to panic attacks, loses his ability to attack, and finds himself a helpless prey and is destroyed at the first blow dealt to him by an enemy. The only way out of a panic attack is to find a safe place and wait for it to pass, allowing Jess to breathe and regain control. To alleviate the suffering of the mind, the main character can use lavender, which allows to regain clarity or meditate, a quick action that Jess can perform anywhere using the token of the Spirit; It is not possible to regain mental health through meditation during a panic attack.

Statistics Body More conventional health that will decrease when Jess gets hurt. Physical attacks weaken him, and Jess must consume ginger to heal her body. this Spirit Finally, it is the inner energy that the protagonist can use to find mental stability but above all to carry out psychic attacks. As mentioned earlier, Jess can fill the Mind by emptying the rod of Spirit through meditation, but in doing so she lacks the energy to throw. psychic attacksRequired for some fights. Such techniques are mostly remote and, like the ones seen in the demo, allow to slow time by a few seconds or create a shockwave that damages or destabilizes enemies. To recharge Jess’s Soul, she will need to access the Spirit Stones, green crystals scattered across the island of Glory, and to learn new psychic attacks she will need to free her companions from the negative energy they carry with them. Instead, the player can collect Prismatic Crystals to enhance Jess’s both passive and offensive abilities; To do this, you need to open the game menu and choose which Jess skill to improve.

Battle system and enemies

Brass Token team, battle system this includes psychic attacks, as we just guessed, but not only. Actually, Jess has in her arsenal, in addition to attacks that can be made using Spirit, hand-to-hand combat, absolutely original. We saw a lot of free space in the Weapon Wheel, only gaining access to four items during the demo: sage sticks to burn, combustible twigs, salt, and essential oil. The first two are lit and shaken by the hero as if they were weapons, while salt and oil are thrown in handfuls, blocking enemies for a few seconds.

The use of salt and oil is very important, not only because they are the only tools the player has to intercept an enemy attack, but also the use of salt and oil. synergy with other weapons. For example, sprinkling oil on the enemy and then hitting them with an incendiary branch will increase the damage done. As far as we can see in the demo, it is also important to learn the types of weapons that are divided into sacred, fire and occult. To understand which weapon is most appropriate to use in battle, it is necessary to know a little about The Chant’s monster, to refer to it in the main menu, keeping in mind the weak points of the creatures living in Gloom. From here we will know whether a particular monster is more vulnerable to psychic or physical attacks and in the latter case to which category it belongs.

Game World

There victory map It is characterized by the commune, a central area around which satellite areas such as mines or canneries are arranged. While the trails discovered in the mine seemed a bit too linear, we found the jungle trails much more challenging in terms of level design. More than once, we have found ourselves trailing backwards, opening shortcuts, searching for keys, as the monsters of Gloom relentlessly chase Jess. This demonic entity manifests itself in two different ways: firstly through the presence of enemies, in the second case the Gloom occupies our place. dimensional plan. Once the entity occupies an area, that area is populated by monstrous creatures, and a heavy colored haze hangs in the air: Only by defeating certain sprawling flowers can the Gloom be cast out. Approaching these plants is very dangerous for Jess, so “disinfecting” an area must be done quickly (because when you’re airborne, Jess loses her mental health), but also with planning and safety.

In reality, what will really save the player is common sense because The Chant is not as scary as we initially expected,survival item very marked. Let’s not hide: we died several times before we came to the conclusion that not all monsters need to be killed. Evade is sometimes the best weapon we have, and indeed, avoiding combat and planting enemies is perhaps the best strategy unless Jess has to. We reached this conclusion in the middle of our testing session after consuming lavender, ginger, sage, salt and all the other ingredients we had on hand. It soon became clear that the herbs Jess had made weapons and healed her wounds were not so plentiful and necessary for survival. manage resources in the hands of the hero. This is obviously something that needs to be evaluated with a longer test, as until now we don’t know if this is the true balance of the game or if it depends on the version we’re playing, which won’t seem strange to us since most games. The demos available at the fair never reflect the final result of the game. What we can focus on instead is the feedback of commands and action sequences that are pleasant without being memorable. We did not encounter any bugs, but as we mentioned, some animations look a bit woody.