The Chant is a new single player, third person horror/thriller from Canadian developers Brass Token.
In The Chant you play the role of Jess, a young woman suffering from psychological trauma. Jess has decided to join a retreat called the Prismic Science Spiritual Retreat on the secluded Glory Island .
The gameplay combines exploration, combat, crafting and a kind of horror mystery to unravel.
It feels very reminiscent of games like the "Dark Pictures Anthology", "Life is Strange", "Hellblade" and maybe even a little bit of "Uncharted".
The tone is very much in the vein of movies like "The Wicker man" or "Midsommer".
These are all great references in their own right, but unfortunately The Chant falls short of really hitting any of them.
In the game, Jess has three core stats: mind, body and spirit.
Mind is your resistance to stress, panic and psychological damage, body represents your physical resistance (HP) and spirit can be used to replenish mind or cast abilities (MP).
Visually the settings and backgrounds are generally top notch. The character models however, seem much less polished.
Awkward movements, peculiar lip sync, PS2 elbow joints and absolutely crazy hair physics really ruin engagement.
In a game that is trying to build tension and suspense, it's a real mood killer to spend half your time laughing at your character or the surrounding NPCs.
There's also a very strange shimmer around your character the whole time it's in motion, looks like a graphical artifact from a resolution mismatch. Again this visual separation of character and background does no favors to immersing you in the game world.
The island retreat itself is fairly well designed. There's odd placements of obstacles around the paths you travel, like fallen trees to vault over. While I get they are there to add a sense of stress and urgency during a chase, they are just annoying. Firstly because, why would no one have moved these out the way at this beautiful retreat? Secondly because to vault, you need to press a button at a very specific section of the obstacle, if you don't hit this exact point, you'll just end up doing your "lotus position" meditative stance (same button), which is simultaneously hilarious and infuriating.
Combat is likewise a bit hit and miss, literally.
Hitboxes feel slightly "off" and there's no real rhythm or weight to any physical encounters. Invulnerability frames from dodges seem over generous, while connecting attacks can seem arbitrary. One attack can seemingly pass through an enemy and miss, while a simple push seems to make contact from an unfeasibly long range.
The Chant is ultimately an over ambitious AA game, that unfortunately misses it's mark. While it tries to make a horror/suspense/survival game anchored to real world psychological issues, it comes across more as an underwhelming B movie spoof.
The marketing and hype surrounding the buildup to the launch of this game, had me genuinely excited and could well have raised my expectations a little too high.
Priced at $39.99 it's firmly and fairly in AA territory and it's an impressive feat for a small indie studio. But from a consumer's perspective there are much better examples of a similar genres out there.
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