The game is a Metroidvania that took heavy inspiration from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. The main difference is that its locations are procedurally generated at the start of every game; however, it has no other Roguelike elements, as the world persists until the game is finished, and player's death does not force one to continue from the start.
Chasm was originally funded
on Kickstarter in 2013. Its original demo can also be downloaded there. Since there were only three people involved, however, the development of the full version went on for five years, until it was released in July 2018.
Not to be confused with the 1997 First Person Shooter Chasm: The Rift.
Chasm contains examples of the following tropes:
- Airborne Mook: Several varieties of ghosts, giant wasps, Imps who attack the player with hammers, and the dragonling creatures who spit out a Spread Shot of fireballs.
- Battle Boomerang: Used by some skeletons.
- Black Cloak: Shaman wears one.
- Blackout Basement: One of the area types is dark enough to reduce visibility to a small circle right around the player character.
- Bloodless Carnage: Downplayed. The clearly flesh-and-blood creatures like Lizardmen shed tiny drops of blood at the point they are slashed to death. These immediately fade away as their bodies cleanly burn up on their own. Weirdly, Ghost Workers shed red blood as well.
- Cassandra Truth: Professor Basden has claimed that King Trell is going mad due to the dark powers long before anyone else was ready to believe him.
- Convection, Schmonvection: The final battle has the player stand on a rock platform just above lava, yet it never harms him.
- Creepy Crows: Shaman fights with the help of these.
- Critical Hit: Can occur randomly when attacking.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: The regular enemies usually burn up as soon as they are killed. The majority get a series of explosions across their body, after which they collapse. Some bosses do die in other ways - i.e. the Titan simply cracks apart.
- Dem Bones: The multiple skeleton enemies, all of whom are the servants of tyrannical King Trell, who became one as well.
- Die, Chair, Die!: You can break lamps to get stuff, just like in SOTN.
- Dug Too Deep: The reason why the town is in trouble and its residents were abducted is because the Mayor's last-ditch plan to extract more from the failing mine ended up blasting into the domain of monsters.
- Energy Ball: Variations of this are fired by nearly all the bosses. Final Boss in particular absolutely loves spamming these.
- Shaman gets a bonus point for shooting red energy crows from his staff.
- Eyepatch of Power: Guildean Knights Commander Silxer has one.
- Everything Fades: The bodies of the enemies often just burn up after getting killed. Signs of any other damage also disappear a few seconds later without a trace.
- Evil Laugh: King Trell does one in between his attacks.
- Flash of Pain: Present whenever you hit the bosses.
- Flawless Victory: Taking no damage when defeating a boss rewards the player with a unique item.
- Flunky Boss: King Trell can summon skeleton back-up during his battle. They literally emerge from the floor after he somehow blows into a trumpet with no lungs.
- Friendly Fireproof: Played straight whenever player's own attacks are completely ignored by the friendly NPCs.
- Gameplay Grading: Besides Flawless Victory rewards after defeating bosses, your performance while playing the game also affects what kind of medal you receive at the swearing-in ceremony in the end.
- Giant Mook: There are the large trolls that slam clubs into the ground to create a shockwave. There are also large suits of knight's armor that carry halberds.
- Glowing Eyes: Wendigo's glowing eyes are the only way to locate it whenever it turns invisible during its battle.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Shaman has permanently glowing red eyes, and so do the crows it summons during his battle.
- Go for the Eye: The only way to defeat the Final Boss.
- The Good King: King Trell is a complete aversion. Even if he was afflicted by the dark powers, his rule still ended with his kingdom's capital destroyed, and a rebellious General explicitly establishing the current Guildea as a "kingdom without a king", one that is instead ruled by the knight's council to ensure one person would never hold absolute power again.
- The Goomba: Trolls, of all things, are this. In this game, the "basic" troll is closer to a grey goblin, dies in one hit, and can only attack up close with knives.
- Grimy Water: Pretty much all the water around is toxic green or purple in color.
- Guilt-Free Extermination War: In the ending, all of the monsters in the mines die in a lava flow formed when you have defeated the Final Boss, and none of the humans have the slightest regret about this.
- Heart Container: Vials that increase maximum health amount are dropped by the defeated bosses.
- Homing Projectile: One of Titan's attacks fires blue homing projectiles from his eyes. The other is a circular spread of similarly blue projectiles from both eyes, and a rain of such projectiles that leave blue fire burning on the ground for a while.
- Most of Shaman's attacks do this to some extent. One of them is literally him firing crows' souls from a staff, and so they obviously try to home in at you. (Though, a flock of actual, living crows he can summon simply travels to exactly where he pointed at first, without trying to change direction afterwards.)
- Hostile Weather: While fighting Shaman, you can see through the windows that there's a magical purple storm raging outside.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Eating food like donuts and salmon restores HP.
- Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Strangely ornate chests are frequently present in the mines. Chests with the reward items also appear as soon as you defeat a boss.
- Informed Equipment: Armor and accessory changes are not reflected in the main character's appearance.
- Justified Save Point: Statues of Watchers serve as save points, and the lore explains that ...
- Level-Up Fill-Up: Getting a new level heals the player up to the new health amount.
- Load-Bearing Boss: The defeat of X'Uta Ulak causes the cavern you were fighting in to collapse. However, you are teleported outside before this happens.
- Luck Stat: Present, governing things like the frequency of critical hits.
- Monster Compendium: The Bestiary, which usually requires multiple monster kills in order to provide any information about the creatures to the player.
- Obviously Evil: Essentially all the bosses and other antagonists are this, in keeping with the game's Black-and-White Morality.
- Platform Battle: The battle with the Final Boss is fought on a platform over lava, which gets split several times during the battle as well.
- Playing with Fire: Wendigo boss can create a fiery shockwave. Other enemies can spit out fireballs.
- Power Floats: Shaman boss spends his battle floating near the center of the room.
- Rare Candy: Learning scrolls permanently increase an attribute by one point.
- Recursive Ammo: One of Shaman's attacks is to create six red projectiles that form a hexagon around his staff. Each of these then splits into six more projectiles.
- Sand Worm: Called a Bone Worm here, but the principle is the same. It typically attacks through firing a Spread Shot of green pellets from its mouth.
- Sequential Boss: The Final Boss, X'Uta Ulak does have three phases, as he gains new attacks and erodes the platform you stand on. All the other bosses have no sequences.
- Skull for a Head: Not counting the skeletons: Gnarlox seems to have a normal enough body, but has a skull under his hood. Equally, Shaman has a bovine skull for a head, or at least a mask. When he's defeated, the rest of his body burns up, while that skull falls to the ground and cracks in two.
- Shield-Bearing Mook: There are some skeletons who fight with swords and shields. However, they can still be harmed from the front through striking at the exposed skulls between their shields and helmets.
- Shockwave Stomp: The proper trolls will their club into the ground to produce a shockwave along it.
- While clinging to the cave ceiling, Wendigo can slam it and cause the rocks to fall down. Then, it'll jump down, producing a shockwave of flame.
- King Trell can produce a blue energy shockwave through stabbing his sword into the ground.
- Spike Balls of Doom: One of the traps around the place.
- Spikes of Doom: Can be present on the walls to make platforming more difficult.
- Spin Attack: King Trell can spin his sword so fast he gets hover like a helicopter for a while.
- Spread Shot: Some enemies spit a spread of three fireballs from their mouth.
- Sucking-In Lines: These appear as the Bone Worm gets ready to spit out emerald-green projectiles from its mouth.
- Tactical Suicide Boss: In his second phase, X'Uta Ulak gets several attacks that do not require him to expose his eyeball, which is his only weak point. Yet, it just cannot restrain itself from a double Spread Shot that requires it to open its eye.
- Taken for Granite: Enemies like the fireball-spitting dragonling creatures petrify and shatter upon death.
- Weirdness Censor: The peaceful NPCs ignore the player swinging weapons in their face.
