Before I clocked the grappling hook, before the bosses started tearing chunks out of the scenery, ChainStaff's artwork hit the mark with me. This is a game that looks like it could have been peeled off a heavy metal album cover. Its airbrushed excess, alien scale, and unapologetic 80s sci-fi bravado are the sort of imagery that once sold entire worlds on the back of the best retro games alone (hello, Shadow of the Beast).
Mommy’s Best Games’ upcoming action platformer is steeped in the visual language of late-70s and 80s fantasy illustration. The influence of Michael Whelan is immediate: vast, strange creatures with exaggerated eyes and organic forms dominate the frame, dwarfing a tiny, defiant hero who looks permanently one bad decision away from being crushed.
Layered over that is a strong whiff of prog-rock excess. The environments feel lifted from the golden age of Roger Dean’s album artwork and the surreal box art that defined Psygnosis’ identity in the Amiga era. Skies swirl with toxic colour, alien fauna bends at impossible angles, and in a moment, I'm back in my 90s bedroom. It’s the same kind of visual promise that powered so many of the best 90s games.
The bombast of '80s fantasy
What’s striking is how little restraint the art direction shows, in the best possible way. ChainStaff isn’t chasing tasteful minimalism or retro pastiche; it's embracing the bombast of its influences: grotesque mutations, high-contrast palettes, and a sense that everything on screen is either hostile, unstable, or both. It’s pure nostalgia, yes, but it's confident, not reverent, and features some very modern gameplay ideas.
Twist is the titular ChainStaff itself; the transforming grappling hook can be flung as a spear, dropped as a shield, or stretched across gaps as a makeshift bridge. It slices bold, readable shapes against backgrounds that might otherwise overwhelm. It’s a smart bit of visual design, in sync with the gameplay design, that alludes to the devs' Insomniac link.
Behind the project is Nathan Fouts, a veteran developer formerly of Insomniac Games, whose past work has always leaned toward clarity wrapped in controlled madness, in hits like Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Mass Destruction. Here, that philosophy manifests as fluid animation and readable combat layered onto worlds that look like they were painted on the cover of a Meat Loaf album.
“I love games such as Mega Man X and Bionic Commando, and I wanted to add something new. The grappling hook mechanics are smooth as silk here, and the ability to change the ChainStaff into a spear, shield, bridge and more, all with the touch of a single button should give players a new type of platforming challenge!” said Fouts.
ChainStaff’s visual throwback isn’t about recreating pixel art or mimicking old hardware limitations. Instead, it taps into a deeper nostalgia, the era when game art promised strange worlds you hadn’t seen before, when box covers and album sleeves did half the imaginative work for you. And then ChainStaff puts it all up in front of you, powered by Unity (additional dev work is being handled by Unity experts Super Soul) and moving at a pace.
ChainStaff launches on 8 April for Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Steam and Xbox One and Series S/X.
