Chasing Static

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Plattform: PC Veröffentlicht: 14.10.2021

12,49€

Preis Update 20.12.22

In the dead of night a fierce storm rages across North Wales. Miles from any town, Chris Selwood seeks refuge in a remote roadside café. Shortly thereafter Chris experiences a horrific sight as he finds the café waitress pinned to the ceiling by something with fierce glowing eyes, he passes out waking up to the dusty old abandoned remains of the café.

Explore the untouched wilderness of rural Wales as you uncover the forgotten remains of a mysterious facility and try to piece together what happened to the missing villagers of Hearth.

Inspired by 80s Sci-Fi horror and contemporary surrealist cinema, Chasing Static delivers a unique take on the narrative adventure genre through new audio driven gameplay mechanics and non-linear exploration.

Features:

Sonic Exploration - Audio driven gameplay mechanics have you hunting anomalies with an experimental Frequency Displacement Monitoring Device.
Lo-Fi, Hi-Fi - Crunchy low poly visuals reminiscent of PS1 classics with full voice acting, high quality sound design and a modern approach to gameplay.
Non-Linear Gameplay - Explore the world of Chasing Static at your own pace, uncovering it's secrets in any order you please.
Bite-sized Terror - A self-contained story with an average playtime of 2 hours.

Deutsch (2)
Englisch (17)

333 Produkte im Account

5 Reviews

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587 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 26.11.21 17:42

Das hätte vielleicht etwas werden können. Fängt durchaus spannend an schafft es dann aber doch nicht den ersten Eindruck zu halten. Das hat man alles schon zu oft gesehen, inklusive verrückter Wissenschaftler und missglückter Experimente. Wobei ich jetzt nicht genau sagen könnte, worum es tatsächlich im Spiel geht. Dafür ist das alles zu kryptisch, zu schwammig und letztendlich auch belanglos.

Und natürlich sind Protagonist und Antagonist sich gegenseitig bekannt weil verwandt; es sind Vater und Sohn. Wer hätte das aber auch kommen sehen? Oder anders ausgedrückt: Das hätte was werden können, ist es aber nicht. Es sorgt maximal für Kurzweil und dafür eignet es sich dann auch nicht, denn dafür gibt es bessere Vertreter dieses Genres.

985 Produkte im Account

4 Reviews

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184 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 15.10.21 21:14

Die Demo hatte mich sehr angesprochen. Leider konnte mich das fertige Spiel, nachdem ich den Abspann nach gut 3 Stunden erreicht hatte, letztendlich nicht abholen. Die ansprechende Grafik und das Sound-Design kann ich positiv hervorheben. Gameplay-technisch hatte ich etwas in der Richtung Silent Hill oder des ersten Resident-Evil-Teils erwartet, doch letztendlich nur ein weiterer Walking-Simulator ohne grosse Highlights erhalten. Schade...

631 Produkte im Account

85 Reviews

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295 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 07.04.22 20:21

Fantastic indie horror walking sim. Well-developed story that is rather open to interpretation and uneasy, tensed atmosphere can be found while chasing static.

Following the death of his father, with whom the relationship was estranged and cold to begin with, Chris Selwood is driving through a rainy Welsh countryside after collecting his father’s belongings. Having lost his way, Chris is pulling over at an aptly named “Last Stop” café for a cup of coffee and directions. That’s where stuff gets weird. Strange energy surge is making him see all kinds of creepy, hard-to-explain things, and it looks like Chris was just transported into a different timeline. Same place, same café, but everything is in ruins. Trying to find out what’s going on and get the hell out of that place, he stumbles upon strange happenings that are much bigger that seemed at first and might have a personal connection. Spooked but determined to get away, Chris is slowly starting to piece things together.

The set-up might sound familiar from a drove of similar stories, but the execution is so well-crafted and enthralling, that what seems like yet another horror-ish exploration title turns out to be a notable, thought-provoking experience.

“Chasing Static” is a walking sim in a nutshell, so most of the time will be spent walking around with a strange audiodevice that can capture static signals from the events that already happened. It’s an evenly paced discovery process, dark and atmospheric; with no jumpscares in their pure form; it’s all up to the mood and setting which are very well done here. There will be a few minor tasks her and there (like starting up the genny or opening a lock), but mostly it’s all about exploration. There are a few side tasks one can accomplish in order to get some achievements, but they aren’t necessary for an overall progression. There’s also quite peculiar fast travel system that might not seem what it is at first, but it is there, if one pays attention.

The graphic element may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the PS1-reminiscent visuals undoubtedly play well into the overall atmosphere. Low poly picture adds a layer of blurriness between the reality and the weird dimension Chris travels through, and the dark tones of the environment coupled with rain and thunder tighten up the feeling of disquiet even more. This was a right choice for the story told, amplifying the ambience tenfold.

Voiceover is excellent here and completes the overall wholesomeness of the game. Voice actors do a fantastic job relaying anything from a casual conversation between co-workers to high tension of a big-stakes project going wrong. The sound effects shine appropriately for a game built on audio exploration. Rainy forest or abandoned research facility will bring a feeling of discomfort and unease just based on the sounds alone. The attention to this gameplay component makes for a terrific result and was very much worth what was probably a hefty investment for an indie developer.

“Chasing Static” is a short (3-5 hours, depending on the player’s exploration pace), atmospheric and memorable trip. With a well-constructed execution of a story that seems as old-as-times by now, wonderfully restless, creepy mood, unique visuals and outstanding sound component, it makes for a superb horror indie walking simulator. Highly recommended for any “thoughtful horror” connoisseur.

170 Produkte im Account

8 Reviews

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139 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 05.04.22 14:08

I finished it in 2 hours and that was going painfully slow so I could explore every little thing, in case there were hidden secrets. The game looks beautiful, but the narrative is lacking and the game mechanic is basically find and fetch leading up to a disappointing ending.

269 Produkte im Account

3 Reviews

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236 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 12.03.22 21:26

Incredible atmosphere, A story that unveils itself with each step and a curious journey.

I rather enjoyed this 'ere game. I didn't find it super duper scary, However the atmosphere kept me tense through the entire game and even jumped a few times from unexpected happenings.

Lovely, short and sweet with replayability. Do it. Play it!

58 Produkte im Account

37 Reviews

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234 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 09.03.22 20:50

Very good atmospheric horror, story was well put together. And it has them good old retro graphics i love so i had a feeling i was going to enjoy this one and i did :) https://youtu.be/KY73PNfmCGg

1387 Produkte im Account

115 Reviews

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265 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 06.03.22 02:29

It was alright. Would recommend to whomever is a fan of the genre.

339 Produkte im Account

49 Reviews

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638 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 04.02.22 19:35

Yes, a very good compact thriller. Easy to manage controls without a single crash. Great sound and visuals with a nice selection of tasks for achievement hunters. For Indie developers that put together short stories, this is what you want to achieve. I hope to see more from Headware games.

23 Produkte im Account

5 Reviews

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207 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 27.12.21 18:27

it was fun

86 Produkte im Account

15 Reviews

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166 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 23.12.21 17:35

This is a well made retro game that doesn't necessarily do anything new, but does everything well. It has RE style puzzles with a chilling atmosphere and interesting mystery that unfolds over time. No obnoxious jump scares, but just a tense, consistent atmosphere throughout. I'm a big fan of the graphics and music too. I ran into one audio glitch when loading my save file, but that was fixed by restarting the game and using the autosave from a few minutes prior. Not a long experience, but well worth the money and time spent. Support indie devs!

195 Produkte im Account

33 Reviews

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171 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 28.11.21 21:04

I really liked Chasing Static. It's set in Wales, where I'm from, so it automatically gets in my good books, but I liked it for the entertaining story and the horror that didn't resort to cheap jumpscares and lack substance. It's got some strongly creepy moments and an entertaining mystery that leaves just the right level of ambiguity and explanation. It's a short game, I did it in 2 hours 30 minutes, but horror shouldn't be very long. This did what it wanted to and got out before getting stale. For some, this length may not justify the price, but I'd definitely recommend getting it on sale if this is a negative point for you. There's also several endings, so you can get a fair few playthroughs out of it and pick up on the stuff you missed.

This was an experience I'm glad I had.

7740 Produkte im Account

10 Reviews

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161 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 28.11.21 20:18

very good

300 Produkte im Account

265 Reviews

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843 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 11.11.21 13:30

I have mixed feelings about Chasing Static. It is a very well designed game with detailed scenery, excellent voice acting, and a conplicated story. The story is told through 'echo' flashbacks which you locate with a Receiver Device that you use to find specific frequencies. The order of these story bits are revealed according to your path so their chronology remains a bit elusive and I am not 100% sure (after playing through 3 times) exactly what took place before my arrival.

Much of the game is spent wandering the landscape, receiver in hand, searching for signals. There are a number of inventory items to find but these tend to be located in close proximity to where they are first used. On my first time in the game, the receiver instructions did not spawn so I spent more than an hour wandering with the Receiver device improperly deployed.

The game has an auto-save at key checkpoints and provides a manual save feature with 10 slots (if you have a specific item in your inventory). I missed this my first time through which meant a lot of lost time because I had not hit an autosave prior to stopping for the evening.

This is a tough game for completionists, as three achievements are linked to ghostly encounters which are a bit tricky. If you encounter a ghost by accident (which is fairly easy to do) or are not successful in dealing with one, said ghost does not respawn unless you start a new game from the very beginning (restoring from an earlier save point is not an option). Thus, you could need to replay through multiple times which becomes quite tedious since all collectibles must be retrieved on each play through. You cannot skip through the echo dialog so there is no option to 'speed up' on a second (or third) time through.

I recommend playing Chasing Static for fun and not for achievements. It is an interesting adventure with a fairly large environment to explore. Those who enjoy exploration to reveal a story should enjoy this journey!

495 Produkte im Account

6 Reviews

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481 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 31.10.21 19:22

The game had a really strong start and amazing atmosphere but the poor writing let it down and ultimately the whole thing fell flat halfway through. I'm not sure I would call this game horror, because honestly it's more close to a walking sim with light puzzle elements than anything else.

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69 Reviews

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319 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 25.10.21 18:47

Lo-fi creepy walking adventure with interesting mechanic revealing story fragments through strange audio device. If only it was a little longer, but still highly recommended with a hope of more like this.

Watch the gameplay video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOo2IeEFf7g

For more quick reviews and recommendations please follow my curator.

107 Produkte im Account

48 Reviews

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200 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 15.10.21 15:40

I was very excited for this game. I've had it on my wishlist for the best part of the year. I played the Demo and it was very, very promising.

On October 14th, I was impatiently awaiting the email that it had been released. Late in the afternoon, I snapped it up as soon as it came avaliable.

After completing that evening and giving it some serious thought, I cannot recommend Chasing Static.

The main, and only real positive in my opinion, is that the game looks really, really good. It's very retro stylised, and has a great atmosphere. Having to navigate dark and murky areas by Torchlight is pretty simple, but does a great job of setting the tone. I know this will be a positive for some, but this game is not scary. It is spooky, and there is some gore and disturbing imagery, but there are no monsters, jump scares or anything like that. he only time I actually got scared was when a Terminal made a really loud BEEP, and I wasn't expecting it.

That's unfortunately where the positives end. Everything that follows the end of the Demo (entering the facility for the first time) is a massive decline. I wouldn't say the Demo lies to you, but I think it sets expectations about the game that are not met.

I can pinpoint the exact, precise moment the problems began. When I went to leave the Cafe to head outside at the start of the game, the player character Chris turned a sharp 90 degrees counter-clockwise, to the table, and said 'is that a camera?'. I am very stupid, and I didn't notice the camera in the dark room, so this was a surprise. However, it was not explained that you use the camera to save by taking a picture, otherwise it acts like a normal save. This has no significance to the overall structure of the game, and I think it's just their to look different. Wouldn't it make more sense to write in the notebook I have, or just a regular old save?

If you are interested in any of the mystery that the game offers, prepare to be dissapointed. What were this institute investigating? What are these green glowy mushrooms, and where do they come from? What's happened to everyone? None of those questions are answered, and I don't think the Game is interested in answering those questions. I found every memory and every note, and nothing became clear. If anything, I feel like the actual narrative of the game, and the backdrop which you discover during Gameplay are mostly unrelated apart from their location.

I'll try not to spoil any of the actual plot beats, but the ending is very unsatisfying, and basically undermines the entire game. As soon as I got the first hint of what was actually happening, I felt a shift in my understanding, and kind of stopped giving a shit at that point.

Talking of Gameplay, it would be unfair to say it's bad, because there is none. The game is like a Flash point-and-click puzzle game, but it does have mostly consistent logic. You need a shovel to dig up dirt, you need keys to open a door, wire cutters to cut through a fence. However, you are very limited in when and where you can use items. I found a patch of dirt which I wanted to dig up, and I know I could because it was like the other diggable patches I'd seen before. But, I hadn't triggered something that allowed me to dig it up yet, even though it was obvious. The location of items relative to where they're required makes it very confusing what they're actually for sometimes, like a set of keys needed to unlock Gates in the Hub area, dug up from an aforementioned Grave across a lake. I didn't immediately twig that that was their purpose, since they're several loading screens apart from another.

This is obviously a problem which they encountered, because in big letters it comes up 'UNDISCOVERED KEY ITEMS REMAIN IN THIS AREA', which was actually a nice reminder. Shame it didn't happen when I actually needed it to, because there was a battery in a Box, hiding underneath an identical, non-nondescript box which I needed to progress. I spent an Hour looking through every single level for it, and I was lucky enough to find a playthrough that had the location I needed.
If I had a single 'UNDISCOVERED KEY ITEMS PING' when I was in that area, I could at least attribute it to my own stupidity. It just felt like the game was deliberately keeping things from me.

Often, your path of progress can be hard to discern, and I really wish there some option to help with that. I am very stupid, and I genuinely thought I softlocked the game at Echo Garden because I couldn't progress.

There will be a lot of backtracking between levels, which are often quite large. You can't jump, but you can sprint. You walk speed is so pathetically slow, I would much prefer it to be the default speed. There is also a fast-travel system which I discovered completely by accident halfway through the game, and is never addressed or questioned? Like, I'm just going to pop into this phone and reappear somewhere else? If we go with what the story implies, then the phone teleportation is just something that happens.

I didn't finish Chasing Static wanting more, I wanted less. Any goodwill the game had made until the ending had deteriorated approximately by the halfway point. I found the whole experience deeply underwhelming, and overall unfinished. I know this is a very small indie game, but it feels kind of undercooked. Pick it up on sale if the atmosphere really vibes with you, otherwise pass. It hurts me to say it, especially after waiting this long, but it's not very good.

79 Produkte im Account

1 Reviews

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98 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 14.10.21 21:34

Super stylish. The game looks and sounds fantastic. It's creepy. It's atmospheric. It's the perfect game for spooky month. Big thumbs up.

49 Produkte im Account

1 Reviews

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260 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 14.10.21 18:41

Chasing Static is a dark, atmospheric game that has you exploring a research facility, its surrounding woods, and a neighboring hamlet, using a signal tracking device that allows you to uncover the secrets of this abandoned place.

In terms of atmosphere and vibe, the game feels a bit like Dear Esther meets Control and Alan Wake. The visuals, especially in the indoor spaces, are gritty, industrial, crunchy and a pleasure to behold. It’s a dark, rainy, atmospheric world with some great dark ambient music to accompany the gameplay.

Without spoiling the story too much, you play as Chris, back home for a family obligation who ends up getting caught up in a much bigger story. The rest of the game has you uncovering the story through flashbacks and some inventory puzzles.

What impressed me the most about this game was its presentation and style. Right from the moment, the studio’s logo shows up at the beginning of the game, to the eerie main menu, to the titles, chapter names, UI, and more, the game’s style is cohesive and beautiful. This is also reflected in the way the different objects are designed – your rusty old scanning device, the blue light it emits, the different dials, the mathematical calculations scrawled on the windows, the brutal architecture – everything fits into this game’s world and builds atmosphere. It’s also always exciting when you’re quietly walking through the woods and your scanning device, silent throughout, suddenly sparks into life with a little light and sound.

If you like dark, story-driven games that are heavy on atmosphere, aesthetics, exploration, and style, this will be right up your alley.

838 Produkte im Account

67 Reviews

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116 Std. insgesamt

Verfasst: 14.10.21 18:07

Chasing Static is a short but memorable experience. It has unique mechanics, an impressive visual style and an overall creepy atmosphere. Any horror enthusiast would enjoy it. Totally recommended.

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