Your friend has just charged headfirst into a group of Roman gladiators, you’re trying to escape a rather nasty-looking pit of snakes, and the chain connecting you both has somehow wrapped itself around a pillar. Neither of you can move and the enemies are closing in. Ah, teamwork. Isn’t it wonderful?
Chained Beasts launches today, bringing four-player gladiatorial mayhem to Steam and consoles. Developed by Australian-New Zealand indie studio Featherweight Games, this cooperative action roguelike throws you and your friends into brutal arena battles where survival depends on working together. The trouble is, you’re literally chained to one another, which makes every decision a potential problem for the entire team.
Friends Who Slay Together, Stay Together
The chains are the main attraction here, and they’re far more than an inconvenient way of keeping your friends nearby. You can use them to trip enemies, restrict their movement, and set up attacks that would be impossible to pull off alone. Get your timing right, and you could send an opponent sprawling before your teammate moves in to finish the job. Get it wrong, and you’ll probably end up dragging your friend into the nearest wall.
Up to four players can fight together, with the chains creating plenty of opportunities for clever coordination and spectacular disasters. You’ll need to think about positioning, movement, and what everyone else is doing before charging into battle.
Of course, you can play solo too, although that does mean missing out on the entertainment of watching your friends accidentally sabotage an otherwise perfectly good plan.
When in Rome, Throw Someone Into a Snake Pit
The arenas are packed with environmental hazards, giving you plenty of ways to deal with enemies beyond swinging a weapon at them. You can hurl urns at opponents, throw enemies into obstacles, or send an unfortunate gladiator straight into a wall of spikes. If you spot a pit full of snakes, well, it would be a shame to let it go to waste.
Weapons can also be thrown to attack enemies from a distance, although there’s an obvious drawback to launching your only sword across the arena. You’ll need to find something else to fight with afterward.
The combat encourages experimentation, letting you combine conventional attacks with whatever dangerous objects happen to be lying around. With your teammates attached to you, even a straightforward fight can quickly turn into a ridiculous mess of flying weapons, tangled chains, and gladiators getting thrown into places they really shouldn’t be.
Three Arenas, One Very Unpleasant Trip to Rome
Your journey begins in Carthage before taking you through the frozen wastes of Germania and eventually into the heart of the Roman Empire. Each of the three chapters brings new battles and increasingly dangerous opponents as you fight to earn your freedom.
The further you progress, the more formidable your enemies become, culminating in confrontations with powerful arena champions. Rome’s final boss, Praefectus, won’t be waiting alone, either. He’s backed by his Praetorian Guard, which sounds like an absolutely delightful welcome party for a group of exhausted gladiators.
You’ll need to master your weapons, use the environment, and somehow convince your teammates to stop getting themselves tangled around everything in sight.
Losing an Eye Is Just Part of the Job
Surviving the arena doesn’t necessarily mean walking away in one piece. Chained Beasts features a persistent injury system that leaves your gladiators dealing with the consequences of their battles. You could develop a painful limp, lose an eye, or start hallucinating things that nobody else can see.
There are potions that can help relieve your suffering, but their side effects might leave you with an entirely different problem. Surgery is another option, assuming you’re feeling brave enough to trust someone with a knife.
Chained Beasts launches today on Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. It’s also available through Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass from launch. With physics-driven combat, environmental hazards, persistent injuries, and up to four players literally tied together, Featherweight Games has created a roguelike where cooperation can be just as dangerous as the enemies.
So gather your friends, sharpen your weapons, and prepare to fight for your freedom. Just make sure everyone agrees which direction you’re running before somebody charges toward the snake pit.