ChainStaff review

ChainStaff is the kind of experience that might initially seem rooted in old-school style and nostalgia. But give the game a few minutes it begins to reveal a surprisingly sophisticated inventory of mechanics. Developed by Mommy’s Best Games’ Nathan Fouts, the title uses a side-scrolling action template and pares it down to a deceptively modest toolkit, before pushing the game’s eponymous device to its absolute limits.

Side-scrolling action games habitually flaunt excess. The genre often provides players with an ever-growing arsenal of shotguns, rocket launchers, energy weapons, and screen-clearing explosives. ChainStaff takes the opposite approach. Instead of attempting to outgun its peers with a massive armory of weapons, Fouts scales things back. You’ll carry a standard automatic rifle and the titular ChainStaff, and beyond some unlockable assistive guns, that’s the toolset you’ll carry with you across ten main stages. Naturally, you’ll learn to harness every bit of that Swiss Army knife-style versatility along the way.

Chain Reaction, A Weapon and a Tool

Expectedly, your ChainStaff can be aimed and flung at opponents, with piercings producing showers of pulpy viscera. But it’s not just a weapon. At different moments, it can act as a grappling hook for traversal, a defensive barrier against incoming attacks, and even a temporary platform to navigate over environmental hazards. The game’s talent lies is rooted in just how seamlessly these functions all blend together. Although you might be able to brute-force your way through basic encounters with your gun, ChainStaff doesn’t force you to use raw firepower. Instead, you’ll likely harness some of tool’s more creative abilities, persistently shifting between offense, defense, and movement in a way that unfailingly feels fluid.

Out the gate, ChainStaff reveals a partiality for spectacle. The game’s aesthetic pays homage to Roger Dean’s album covers for bands like Yes and Asia with backdrops filled with fantastical floating platforms. Environments are drenched in garish color combos of early NES games while dialogue feels lifted from a 90’s-era New Line Cinema releases. As with Fouts’ previous releases, there’s plenty of playful references to different kinds of media. And given how serious most contemporary games take themselves, a bit of irrelevance is a welcome ingredient. And don’t get me wrong, Deon van Heerden’s (Broforce) soundtrack rocks, occasionally a bit harder than the on-screen action during a platforming challenge.

Chain of Command: Building on the Classics

Undoubtedly, fans of classic side-scrollers will immediately recognize the DNA of older titles, particularly in the way enemies spawn in waves and levels are arranged around forward momentum. But this familiarity is something of a misdirection. As the game progresses, the design becomes increasingly demanding, asking you to harness the versatility of the ChainStaff, as you focus on positioning, timing, and resource use.

Largely, spacing becomes a decisive skill. Enemies aren’t just obstacles to be cleared away by a finger on the fire button. No, they’re elusive threats that force you to think about distance and angles. Approach some species carelessly and they’ll leap at you with bloodthirsty intent. Timing is just as essential. Whether you’re deflecting incoming projectiles, grappling to safety, or chaining attacks together, success depends on precision and experience rather than basic button mashing. Collectively, enemy AI makes ChainStaff’s worlds feel dangerous, and that’s a feeling missing from a lot of modern run-and-guns.

Brain Foods

There’s even a bit of decision making that shapes each run as you determine what to do with the soldiers scattered around each stage. This upgrade mechanic lets you harvest knowledge from fallen adversaries, absorbing fragments of their combat instincts to temporarily boost your reflexes or unlock experimental techniques. Just like the rest of the game, it’s both campy and inventive, with each potential meal a micro-gamble. While eating their brains with boost your health and damage output, NPCs will interact with you suspiciously signaling that you’re heading toward one of the bad endings (there’s six in all). Alternatively, you’ll earn tech points that can be used to augment your main gun.

Ultimately, ChainStaff is a reminder that restraint is a welcome reprieve to excess. By limiting its arsenal and doubling down on a single, multifaceted tool, Nathan Fouts has crafted an experience that feels both focused and expressive. What begins as a familiar run-and-gun steadily evolves into something more creative, testing your precision and adaptability just as much as your reflexes. More than a simple homage to 80’s classics, ChainStaff revitalizes the run-and-gun platforming adventure with a catalog of new ideas.

ChainStaff was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.