The Chant brings us a spiritual adventure and new things for the genre of survival with terror

Playing “The Chant” gave me some very interesting moments, it brings us that feeling similar to playing “Silent Hill” or “The Evil Within”, with a new proposal for the genre and with different mechanics, but that could be a little more elaborated and worked on. So let’s talk about these topics.

In “The Chant”, we are introduced to Jess, our protagonist who we have very little information about at the beginning: we only know that she is dealing with a lot of trauma, fly phobia, and that she has joined a friend on this isolated island for a spiritual retreat.

The proposal caught my attention, although it was not very in-depth. I say this because the game quickly throws us into the action without giving time to get to know more about Jess herself and the other characters in the plot. Even trying to bring this out during gameplay, for me, it took some of the weight off the consequences of actions, since I had no attachment to any of these characters.

Many parts of the story are told in texts scattered around the island, which is a nice thing, but not everyone will have the patience to read them. Other games have done this, but they are just read over and left out, I would have preferred a little more story being told during the game in some other way.

It’s a bit difficult to comment on the story without giving away parts of the plot. But revealing as little as possible: the characters mess with some plants on the island, do their rituals, and start hallucinating, leaving us curious if what we are seeing is real or some collective outbreak. This is something positive in the storyline, because it keeps the player from the beginning to the end wanting to find out what is really going on.

Unfortunately, the choices that the game gives you have little influence on the story, only some dialogs here and there change, but the result is the same, influencing only the end of the game.

Simple gameplay and short game time, but the lack of importance for choices takes away from the replay value

“The Chant” is a short game, so much so that on my first impression, I thought it would be like a “Until Dawn” or “Man of Medan” style adventure, which are more interactive movie driven games that have that much play time. I was able to finish the game on normal difficulty in about four hours. For me, I believe it is a good time for the style of game we are presented, after all, having a super simple combat and a lot of back and forth from one point to another on the island, would make the adventure very tiring in a long period of gameplay.

The walking around the island is very linear and the speed of Jess’ movement is a little slow for my taste, I would prefer freedom to know the island a little more.

Unlike other survival-themed games, here we do not use firearms or melee weapons. We use a combination of plants, such as incense to ward off creatures, torches, salt, and other natural objects. This is an excellent differential for the genre and we can combine materials and create new items at any time, after all, your weapons wear out during combat.

The enemies have very unique and interesting shapes and appearances and each area has its own type of opponent, many of the fights can be avoided if you prefer not to wear out your life and resources.

In addition, Jess has crystals that give you new abilities, which serves as an incentive for the player to advance and get more of these powers. The game does not teach you well how to use them and how they work, it only displays a brief description on a screen, so in the first playthrough we may end up forgetting or leaving these abilities aside.

The game also presents us with 3 bars for character management: we have our Sanity, which we must keep high to avoid panic attacks, making Jess unable to perform some actions; the body, which is our health and if it is empty the character will die; and the spirit bar, which we use for crystal powers and also to convert to meditation, which will restore part of the Sanity. It is not a complicated management, it is well worked out and works well.

Streamers will be able to please their audience without too much difficulty, if their machine can handle it

“The Chant” is a great game to bring on live broadcast, because it has a good playing time, you can have fun with your audience, discovering the mysteries of the island and taking a few scares here or there.

The game also has subtitles and some voiceovers in several languages.

The biggest problem comes from the fact that the game is not very well optimized, being a problem if your machine does not have a certain power. This can hinder smaller streamers who don’t usually have such powerful machines.

My machine is not very powerful, but I was able to livestream more visually beautiful and heavy games, while “The Chant” gave me many problems, even at the lowest setting. Outside of a livestream the game ran smoothly on the “High” setting, maintaining over 60 FPS. So, here’s a warning for those who don’t have a more robust machine.

Overall, “The Chant” brings us a fun adventure while it lasts, the combat is simple, but it helps us not to have a feeling of helplessness when surrounded by enemies. The beginning is fast paced and takes away the chance to get to know the characters better and their choices to influence the direction of the story. At this point, much of the weight of what the game can offer was taken away, after all it is a very short game and having more variety in the story would help its replay that is super low, not even possessing a New Game+, especially for its price.

If you want to learn more about the game, click here.

For streamers, creators and influencers, you can get game keys for “The Chant” clicking here.

Fezudu