I can't see a thing in the video, I can't hear a sound on the radio

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.

I have mixed feelings about Chasing Static. It is a very well designed game with detailed scenery, excellent voice acting, and a complicated 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 get 'hit' by a ghost (which is fairly easy to do when you are getting the lay of the land), said ghost does not respawn unless you start a new game from the very beginning. Thus, you could need to replay through multiple times which becomes a bit 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 for achievements (if you don't mind multiple play-throughs). It is an interesting adventure with a fairly large environment to experience. Those who thrive on exploration to reveal a story should enjoy this journey!

An added note... I took the hit and replayed yet another time (start to finish) to reach 100%. Knowing where the ghosts are, ahead of time, is a must!

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.

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 ♥♥♥♥ 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.

Essentially "baby's first Silent Hill", Chasing Static takes you on a very short adventure centered around weird anomalies causing past memories to linger in our plane of existence. Anomalies can be detected with a sound-based device allowing you to see what happened in certain areas in relation to the events of the game. The main character, Chris, is stuck in the area and only way out is stabilizing the anomalies by playing tapes on special devices. Gameplay loop is centered on exploring areas to find key items that you can use to progress forward.
Game uses PS1 styled simplified polygonal graphics, which are pleasant to look at and fit the setting, while sound design is very good and atmospheric, for example muffling out background noise every time you activate the detection device (making sounds feel like you're hearing them through headphones).
The length of the game is a bit of a downside, but game has 4 different endings you can seek out, which lends itself to the replayability. However with it being centered on the same item puzzles and not even having any combat system that's not much of an incentive. Beating the game for the first time unlocks a new mode called "Restless Dreams" or something in this line, but I don't know what it changes, supposedly it's just an aesthethic thing.

The game starts out great, but the moment you get to the core mechanic - the directional microphone that picks up echoes of the past - everything instantly tanks.

Instead of a beautiful and immersive exploration/walking sim with great sound design which it was for the first half an hour, you now turn in a circle with your microphone out until you get a response, walk towards it in a straight line and once you arrive, you listen to what's an equivalent of a meandering audiolog, except for its entire duration you're unable do anything but walk around, and its duration is usually about two times longer that it should've been to not ruin the pacing.

Feels to me this mechanic is at odds to everything else in the game, to the point it feels like a bait and switch and wasted potential.

upd: Finished the game today. While the pacing picks up somewhat in the later half, the game commits another cardinal sin in having you watch nearly the same unskippable ending cutscene and unskippable credits FOUR separate times should you wish to go for 100% achievements.

Great atmosphere with the PS1 demake look. No jumpscares and just ok story.

The story is thought provoking, but the game didn't expand or answer a lot of questions so you will be left wondering what really happened.

Unfortunately, I'm going to treat this as a walking simulator. While there is a retro puzzle mechanic and the sound echo locator, it was very simple and not complicated enough to my liking. I also hate that you need to HOLD the shift button a lot because of the backtracking without a toggle implemented.

Lastly, it's also Very short as well, 2.5 hours so I'm only recommending this at 66% sale or more.

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.

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.