This review contains spoilers
This was the first of those itch.io indie horrors i've played where the horror genre was taken and experimented to narrative and stylistic extremes. C.H.A.I.N. is a collaborative product of Haunted PS1, a community of appassionate indie horror gamedevs, who have decided altogether to pull out their first collaborative effort into making a collection where each different game would link to another to create an unique narrative experience. The result? 20 totally different games but a bare consistency of narrative. It didn't came out so bad, but the narrative is not as clear as it could seem and each game has varying qualities due to each developer being completely different from each other. The obvious thing is that each game (presented as a 'specimen') should be played in ORDER so obviously playing a random game in the collection spoils you something.
The collection's main thematic revolves around the fate of humanity, which is mostly present around the other half of the collection. In few words, the story starts with some random woman exploring a tomb to encounter a mysterious man who would lead her into a deep sea full of strange things. From there, shit ensues. Giving birth to a parasitic monster that at first seemed a really strange baby only to eventually become a huge ass mantis-like monster ruling the goddamn world. That's what C.H.A.I.N. is for, a kind of session of Gartic Phone, but for game developers.
What i liked in this collection is that the first half of the collection had a promising narrative, but around the 13th game i felt like the overall quality dripped when the story proceeded into a kind of Slender premise, with three (yeah, that's three) games having that same gameplay of finding hidden pages while avoiding a particular creature, and i totally felt disappointed that the last games had this recycled mechanic. The 15th game was so anxiety inducing as well that i gave up... right when the game had NO ending. Oh well...
Overall, i find this collection quite fun, but doesn't have to deserve a better rating considering the overall quality amount put into it so there's nothing much really outstanding to expect. If you're into playing lots of experimental horror games this would like you, but beware of the lame Slender-like gameplay found in few of the collection's games which may be quite of a nuisance to some players. Also, the ambiguous nature of the game's endings may not satisfy you enough incase you were expecting something bigger like you would play a well curated indie game.
C.H.A.I.N. is more a project made to entertain among a small community of short horror enthusiasts, so expect nothing more than just shenanigans.
The collection's main thematic revolves around the fate of humanity, which is mostly present around the other half of the collection. In few words, the story starts with some random woman exploring a tomb to encounter a mysterious man who would lead her into a deep sea full of strange things. From there, shit ensues. Giving birth to a parasitic monster that at first seemed a really strange baby only to eventually become a huge ass mantis-like monster ruling the goddamn world. That's what C.H.A.I.N. is for, a kind of session of Gartic Phone, but for game developers.
What i liked in this collection is that the first half of the collection had a promising narrative, but around the 13th game i felt like the overall quality dripped when the story proceeded into a kind of Slender premise, with three (yeah, that's three) games having that same gameplay of finding hidden pages while avoiding a particular creature, and i totally felt disappointed that the last games had this recycled mechanic. The 15th game was so anxiety inducing as well that i gave up... right when the game had NO ending. Oh well...
Overall, i find this collection quite fun, but doesn't have to deserve a better rating considering the overall quality amount put into it so there's nothing much really outstanding to expect. If you're into playing lots of experimental horror games this would like you, but beware of the lame Slender-like gameplay found in few of the collection's games which may be quite of a nuisance to some players. Also, the ambiguous nature of the game's endings may not satisfy you enough incase you were expecting something bigger like you would play a well curated indie game.
C.H.A.I.N. is more a project made to entertain among a small community of short horror enthusiasts, so expect nothing more than just shenanigans.