Review
Sasha here! 👋
I ain't going to sugar coat this. This game is certainly just Super Monkey Ball meets Chained Together, and surprisingly it's not as crazy an idea as you might think!
When playing with friends you're tethered together by a chain with your sole goal to make it through a Super Monkey Ball style obstacle course. When you play by yourself you're tethered to a metal ball.
I wasn't able to convince Annie to play this one with me today so I had to contemplate on whether this game would be easier or harder to play with friends... I had a bit of a chuckle when I realized I was effectively comparing my own friends to a literal dead weight. That being said I do think that the game would be easier with another conscious being on the other end of the tether.
Rage Games
Co-op rage games are a different breed of genre. Chain-Chillas genuinely seems to be a game more focused on bringing a new twist to a game beloved by many. I can see fans of 3D Marble platformers having a blast working through levels with other skilled friends, but what about Joe Shmoe?
The rage genre has been fairly successful thanks to it being highly streamable. Most consumers of these types of games do so through parasocial relationships, some of them go buy the game and convince their friends to do the same. This is similar to most other friendslop games you know.
You might wonder what the rage genre would be without our modern social media platforms. NES games such as Ghost 'n Goblins, Battletoads, or Silver Surfer, are classics that people still play to this day for a personal challenge. They're considered extremely difficult, nearly impossible, and yet people play them for personal accomplishment and sometimes competition. So there is a valid reason to playing them and it shouldn't be discounted as a genre. Even if they're popularized by sensationalized clips of influencers raging online.
Personally I would ask myself why I choose to play video games and what I'm looking to get out of them. For Chain-Chillas, I absolutely could see myself enjoying it for what it is, but I know that I would need to play it with someone else with the same goals and intentions to get the experience I'd want. Who could you see yourself playing a rage game with?
Final Thoughts
Does this game actually have a deeper message about friendship? Is this game calling my friends dead weights? Probably not. You can decide for your self by playing the demo with a friend. It's set to "Coming Soon" on Steam so there's no price point available just yet on this one.
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