ChainStaff, a brutal 80s sci-fi action platformer from indie studio Mommy's Best Games, launches on April 8 across Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam. Led by Nathan Fouts, a veteran who previously worked at Insomniac Games on titles like Resistance: Fall of Man and Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction before later working on Serious Sam Double D XXL, the studio has built its catalogue around wild gameplay layered onto classic action genres. Pre-orders are open now on Switch and Xbox.
The world is hand-drawn, fully illustrated in a style pulled from 70s and 80s album covers. Mist trails around rocky crags, water streams down mossy cliffs, wind blows over icy moonlit hills. It's a surreal landscape, mutated and hostile, but rendered with the kind of detail that makes you want to linger even when everything on screen wants you dead. Driving all of it forward is a heavy metal soundtrack from Deon van Heerden, the award-winning composer behind the music for Broforce and Warhammer 40K: Shootas Blood & Teef. Scorching riffs and pounding beats set the tempo, punctuated by lighter interludes of 70s synth and catchy melodies, even some cowbell, before slamming back into headbanging territory. The sound doesn't just accompany the action. It sets the pace for it.
The weapon at the centre of everything is the ChainStaff itself, a transforming spear and grappling hook controlled with a single button. Hurl it as a spear to slice aliens in half. Throw it to the ground as a shield to block incoming attacks. Grapple and swing on just about anything. There are no context menus, no dedicated build buttons. How you use it is entirely up to your own timing and ingenuity, and the game layers its challenges around that flexibility. Every creature in the world has been mutated by the invading Star Spores, each one presenting its own challenge and its own particular way to be dismantled. Beyond the dozens of unusual ground-level enemies, screen-filling boss fights wait at the end of that gauntlet. Death comes in plenty of disgusting ways, from being pounded to mush to being sheared clean in two, but all deaths are avoidable with the right strategy.
The premise is straightforward in the way the best pulp sci-fi tends to be. The Star Spores have invaded Earth, warping life into ferocious mutant creatures. You play as a human with an alien parasite attached directly to your head, a nasty passenger that also happens to grant you the strength to fight back and control over the ChainStaff. The goal is to push through the horde, defeat the Star Spores, and maybe get this thing off your head. Along the way, stranded soldiers dot the landscape, and each encounter forces a choice: rescue your comrades, or listen to the alien voice and harvest their organs for upgrades. Each option carries unique benefits and leads to different endings, giving the player's moral compass real mechanical weight.
The tension between cooperation and parasitic self-interest runs through the whole setup. The alien on your head is simultaneously your greatest asset and the thing pushing you toward monstrous decisions, and the game's branching endings hinge on how far you're willing to go. Mommy's Best Games, founded by Fouts in 2007, has built a catalogue that includes Pig Eat Ball, Shoot 1UP, Explosionade, and Weapon of Choice, all games that lean into chaotic action with a sense of humour about their own excess.
ChainStaff offers around six to eight hours on a first playthrough, with its branching soldier choices providing reason to return. The single-button weapon design keeps the skill ceiling high and the barrier to entry low, letting the ChainStaff's versatility reveal itself through play rather than through tutorials.