DaRmaZat Released on April 17 for PC, Chasmal Fear is a first-person tactical shooter survival horror game developed by MystiveDev and published by Wandering Wizard and Snail Games USA. Combining resource management, stealth, and mutated monstrosities, the game aims to deliver a tense and atmospheric underwater experience.
Diving into Magnus
Set in the mysterious underwater facility known as Magnus City, Chasmal Fear begins after all communication with the complex is lost. You are sent in alone to investigate. Armed only with a pistol and a strange serum that enhances your knife, you’re quickly plunged into a dark and claustrophobic world filled with disturbing, Lovecraftian masses and gory remnants of whatever went wrong down here.
The story unfolds slowly as you uncover lore through emails, video logs, and audio messages scattered throughout the station. You’ll find yourself crossing paths with grotesque mutants and malfunctioning robots as you explore dimly lit steel corridors. Keycards, access codes, and occasional quick-time elements gate your progress, but unfortunately, many of these moments are overly simplified, with objectives often spelled out for you in the quest log—sapping some of the immersion the setting works so hard to build.
Tactical combat and tense decisions
Gameplay in Chasmal Fear revolves around tight resource management, choice-driven paths, and survival-driven mechanics. Ammo is extremely limited, and enemies are often bullet sponges. The game features co-op play, where the difficulty scales based on player count, adding an extra dimension to its survival aspect. In all cases, you’ll need to think twice before engaging—especially because certain enemies can mutate after being shot, turning into even stronger forms if not finished off with your serum-coated knife.
Early combat feels manageable, as enemies shamble toward you slowly. But this pacing quickly ramps up as mutants begin to swarm and evolve, forcing fast weapon switches—something made easier by the game’s quick but slightly unrealistic weapon-swapping system. You’ll eventually unlock more firepower, including a rifle, after making a meaningful narrative choice that also affects how future sections of the game unfold.
Despite its tactical ambitions, the AI is inconsistent. Some enemies respond to your flashlight or the noise of nearby combat, while others stand idle. Navigation is very linear, and there’s no jumping, strafing, or vaulting, which makes dodging attacks—especially from acid-spitting enemies—frustrating. Crouch can’t be toggled either, and with no visual HUD, accessing basic stats like health or ammo requires holding a button, which interrupts the flow in tense situations.
Dark depths and eerie echoes
Visually, Chasmal Fear leans into gritty realism, portraying the oceanic abyss with crumbling walls, flickering lights, and unsettling architectural decay. The bodycam perspective adds to the immersive horror, creating a fishbowl-like, slightly zoomed-in view. While this style adds tension, it might not be for everyone—especially in combination with the unchangeable head bobbing. At least, the zoomed-in bodycam can be toggled off.
Thanks to Unreal Engine 5, the visuals are sharp and realistic but performance isn’t always smooth. You may encounter graphical hitches, especially when enemies spawn, sometimes even phasing through walls and doors. The flashlight is essential in the pitch-black halls, and hearing a terrifying screech just before catching a glimpse of a mutant adds to the dread. Jumpscares vary in quality—some cheap, like sudden enemy spawns right in front or behind you, and others more creative, such as catching twitching limbs through windows moments before something leaps onto the ceiling.
Where the game truly shines is in its sound design. While the voice acting can be abrupt and underwhelming, the ambient audio is rich and disturbing. Breathy gasps, flickering lights, strange visions, and subtle whispers all enhance the tension. Environmental cues are finely detailed, helping to sell the horror atmosphere and calling back to the immersive soundscapes of the games that clearly inspired it.
Final Thoughts
Chasmal Fear is a game with a clear concept: a claustrophobic dive into survival horror, wrapped in a gritty sci-fi aesthetic. It brings together tactical combat, limited resources, and a mutation system that adds urgency to its encounters. The atmospheric sound design supports the setting well, and the premise has potential. That said, in its current state, the execution still leaves much to be desired. The linear level design, erratic AI behavior, and technical roughness—both in performance and core mechanics—result in an experience that more often feels frustrating than truly tense. While it doesn’t aim to redefine the genre, and may speak to players interested in a slower, darker shooter, Chasmal Fear is quite a ways off from becoming the fully realized nightmare beneath the sea. With continued development, however, there’s hope that many of its shortcomings will be addressed in time.
Additional Information
Release Date: April 17, 2025
Reviewed On: PC. Download code provided by the publisher and PR agency.
Developer: MystiveDev
Publisher: Wandering Wizard, Snail Games USA
Official Website: https://www.mystivedev.com
Relevant links: Chasmal Fear on STEAM
